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WILLIAM JOSEPH SIMMONS 
Founder of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and Emperor 

Invisible Empire 



THE KLAN 
UNMASKED 


h 

WILLIAM JOSEPH SIMMONS 

Founder of 

The Knights of The Ku Ki.ux Klan 
and 

- - 

Emperor of The Invisible Empire 


PUBLISHED BY THE 

Wm. E. THOMPSON PUBLISHING CO. 

ATLANTA, GEORGIA. 




H O^.'S'SO 

\/ Q 

, 05 


COPYRIGHT, 1923 

by 





Illustrations by J. A. Murdoch, Atlanta, Ga. 


FEB 13 1924 


/ 








TABLE OF CONTENTS 


Chapter Page 

Foreword: Why I Write a Book . . 7 

PART ONE 

Organization and Methods 

I. The Klan Yesterday and To-day . . 18 

11. We Americans—A Vanishing People . 26 

\III. Fraternalism of The Klan ... 38 

IV. The Klanishness of The Klan . . 46 

V. Is The Klan Anti-Semitic? ... 55 

-VI. Is The Klan Anti-Catholic? ... 64 

'“VI I. The Terminology of The Klan . . 79 

VIII. Symbolism of The Klan .... 87 

IX. The Rendezvous.97 

PART TWO 

The Fading Hope of Democracy 

X. Democracy as a Sociai*; System- is on Trial 103 

XI. Our Cities a Menace to Democracy . 113 

XII. The Failure of Democracy in Central and 

Eastern Europe .119 

XIII. Foreign Outposts in The United States 126 

XIV. The Racial Limitations of Democracy 139 

XV. The American Negro as Ward of The Nation 147 

XVI. We Americans are a Peculiar People . 161 

XVII. Giantism—The National Disease of America 174 

XVIII. Drifting.184 

PART THREE 

A Salvaging Policy for Americanism 

XIX. “The Federal Union—It Must be Preserved” 198 

XX. Our Country’s Part Among the Nations 212 

XXI. We English-Speaking People Must Stand 

Together 219 

XXII. The Nemesis of Immigration . . . 230 

XXIII. The Problem of Restricting The Suffrage 248 

XXIV. National Solidarity Through Education 260 

XXV. The Conservation of The American Home 274 

XXVI. A Final Word .284 
















WHY I WRITE A BOOK 



ARIOUS representatives of the press, 


V as well as many of my colleagues in the 
organization of which I have the honor to 
be the Founder and head, have repeatedly 
asked me to make a public statement, de¬ 
scriptive of our organization. It was an¬ 
ticipated in certain quarters that we should 
at once make specific reply to the embittered 
attacks upon the Klan. Although abundant 
space in the press was placed at our dis¬ 
posal for this purpose, we did not take ad¬ 
vantage of the offer. It is no part of the 
policy of the Klan to enter into heated 
public controversies—even in self-defense. 
We felt all along that a clear and simple 
statement of facts concerning the form of 
of our organization, its methods and ulti¬ 
mate purposes, while perhaps due the public, 
was not due the instigators of the attacks 
upon us. We are not as yet aware of 
the exact source of these attacks. Yet, I 
may say, the membership of the Klan uni¬ 
versally welcomed it, realizing that sooner 



8 THE KLAN UNMASKED 

V 

or later the Klan must be under fire. Wheth¬ 
er or not we are enemies of our country and 
of freedom we are quite willing to leave for 
the public to decide. 

Meanwhile, the direct effect of these 
attacks upon the Klan will not be without 
interest. Our ranks have been rendered 
more firm and steady. The public has been 
rather amused than affected seriously by the 
reams of villification which were heaped upon 
the Klan. It now remains for us to tell what 
the Ku Klux Klan really is, how it came in¬ 
to existence, and what it purposes to do 
through the organized power of its mem¬ 
bership. 

We have been outrightly accused of main¬ 
taining secrecy in the conduct of our organ¬ 
ization. We ask, in rejoinder, for how long 
has it been a crime or a misdemeanor in 
the United States for a fraternal organiza¬ 
tion to employ secrecy in the conduct of 
its affairs? We have, literally, hundreds of 
secret organizations in this country. The 


WHY 1 WRITE A BOOK 


9 


fact that a number of persons draw them¬ 
selves together in an organization for mutu¬ 
al aid, for mutual confidences, and for 
mutual effort, implies that they have some¬ 
thing in common which they do not wish 
to share fully with the public. So has every 
family and almost every business. Then, 
too, the element of secrecy no doubt de¬ 
velops the interest of the membership, add¬ 
ing to the charm as well as to the value of 
their fellowship. Concerning this feature 
of our organization, I feel assured that we 
might appeal to the common sense and fair¬ 
ness which Americans are always and every¬ 
where ready enough to show. No one ex¬ 
pects the Masonic fraternity or the Knights 
of Columbus,—to mention two large, well- 
known and respected fraternal organiza¬ 
tions in this country,—to exhibit all their 
forms of salutation and other formalities to 
the public. We simply claim the same rights 
and privileges which other fraternal organ¬ 
izations share, both under the law and in 
the esteem of the public mind. 



10 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


New organizations and movements usual¬ 
ly draw the fire of the uninformed. People 
are inclined to be suspicious of that which 
they do not understand. When Masonry 
first assumed its larger importance in Ameri¬ 
ca it was the object of attacks so bitter that 
some of the members were placed in danger 
of their lives. An Anti-Masonic party, 
nearly a hundred years ago, acquired materi¬ 
al importance and sent several members to 
Congress. Just preceding the War Between 
the States, the Know-Nothing, or Anti- 
Catholic party ran through its brief but 
stormy career. This party was caused by the 
fact that the Catholic Church was growing 
in certain parts of the country where it had 
hitherto been almost unknown. When we 
Klansmen reflect upon these historical facts 
we are much consoled. It remains only to 
say, in this connection, that we bear our 
recent detractors not the slightest ill will 
whatever. They do not understand us. That 
is all. 

We confess that the Ku Klux Klan has 
been organized in order to help in the ac- 


WHY I WRITE A BOOK 


11 


complishment of a great task. Neither the 
magnitude of this task nor its vital import¬ 
ance to the future of our country are yet 
widely realized. Our American citizenship 
is usually earnest and active with regard to 
the discharge of its more simple duties. 
With reference to larger social problems, 
however, problems which sometimes as¬ 
sume the form of great national dangers, our 
country is often enough soundly asleep. The 
Ku Klux Klan proposes to wake the sleeper 
and make him at least sit up, look around, 
and ask the time of day. 

Whether or not we are enabled to ac¬ 
complish all that we have set out to do 
remains for the future to decide. But I may 
say that the growth of the Klan and the 
universal spirit and activity of its member¬ 
ship indicate pretty clearly that neither our 
hopes nor our efforts, thus far, have been in 
vain. The Klan is growing in the North 
and West more rapidly than in the South. 
It has been carefully and permanently 
grounded in nearly every large city. It 


12 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


will eventually spread to every town, ham¬ 
let and country cross-roads. With our six 
years of organized effort and our present 
status in mind, we may be pardoned for 
saying that we feel that there must be some 
need for an organization which has, in so 
short a time, shown such phenomenal 
strength. The Klan exists because it satis¬ 
fies a most vital need in our national public 
life. Our opponents have tried to indicate 
that our position and purposes are purely 
negative. Nothing is farther from the truth. 
Any candid, logical and patriotic mind which 
will reflect upon this and the following 
chapters of this book can not be our enemy. 

In order to first clear the way of the trivial¬ 
ities which have been placed there to clog 
our footsteps, I wish in this foreword to 
state most positively certain facts with 
reference to our organization. The Ku 
Klux Klan has not been organized or con¬ 
ducted in opposition to any religion or re¬ 
ligious sect, or against the members of any 
race or language group, either within or 


WHY I WRITE A BOOK 


U 


without the borders of our country. Upon 
this point let no doubt be left in the mind 
of any American. It has been falsely stated 
that we are fanning the flames of hatred 
against the Negro race. Exactly the opposite 
is the truth. To our fellow citizens of the 
Jewish or the Roman Catholic faith, and 
to other groups too numerous to mention, 
we enter a flat denial to all those pure fabri¬ 
cations which have seemingly given them 
so much alarm. It is, indeed, quite true 
that our membership is restricted. It in¬ 
cludes only citizens of the white race. So 
does the membership of the Clan-na-Gael 
and of B’rith Israel. If it may be truthfully 
said that our membership is also restricted 
to Christians and to Protestants, this is 
due purely to the fact that certain deduc¬ 
tions may be made from certain paragraphs 
in our Constitution and By-Laws. We have 
not yet ceased wondering why attacks should 
be made upon us in the public press on that 
score. The membership of the Knights of 
Columbus is, I believe, restricted to members 
of the Roman Catholic Church. Is there 


14 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


anything especially dangerous or wrong abou t 
that? I should not say so. Catholic Church¬ 
men have both a legal right and a moral 
right to organize and conduct a fraternal 
order by and for themselves alone. More¬ 
over, the Knights of Columbus as an organ¬ 
ization, and in the personnel of its indi¬ 
vidual members, would be well within their 
rights in demanding that they be saved 
from slander, villification and unjust 
attacks of every sort, because of the re¬ 
striction of their membership to those of 
one faith. Since the end of the war various 
German organizations, such as fraternal 
orders, singing societies, etc., have begun to 
re-establish themselves. These organizations 
are fully protected by the law and their 
members do not lack the esteem of their 
English-speaking fellow citizens. Hence, 
I would most candidly ask—and would that 
my voice could be heard throughout the 
length and breadth of the land—since when 
has it become a crime for a body of Ameri¬ 
can-born, English-speaking, white citizens 
to organize themselves into a fraternal order? 



WHY I WRITE A BOOK 


15 


What has happened in our country which 
seems to bring our particular racial and 
social group so much into disrepute? Since 
the House of Representatives in Washing¬ 
ton has investigated us, why is not a reso¬ 
lution presented asking the House to in¬ 
vestigate other institutions of a similar 
nature? However that may be, since we 
have been duly investigated, and the in¬ 
vestigation has ended without the slightest 
accusation or criticism, so far as we know, 
on the part of the House Committee, we 
would now ask our accusers, in their turn, 
to be candid enough to do one of two things. 
They must either present further facts to 
substantiate their accusations or retract the 
accusations. 

We repeat most emphatically—The mem¬ 
bers of the Ku Klux Klan, as individuals or 
as Klansmen, are not the enemies of the 

Negro. We are the best friends the Negro 
has, here or anywhere. Our organization 
makes opposition to no religious sect or 
creed, as such. Our order is based squarely 



16 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


upon the Constitution and laws of our 
country. We hope never to be unmindful 
of the basic fact that both the Federal and 
State Constitutions guarantee freedom of 
religious belief and practice. We invite 
our fellow citizens of every faith to join us 
in the protection of so valuable and sacred 
a right. Every statement made at any time 
that we would deny this right to others 
than ourselves is an absolute and unmiti¬ 
gated falsehood. In conclusion, let me 
emphasize that the Ku Klux Klan conducts 
its activities not only within the law, but 
in active support of the law. Our general 
organization would not tolerate for a mo¬ 
ment any illegal act on the part of any of 
our local organizations. The Klan has not 
been formed to express little hatreds but to 
study crucial problems and aid in the exe¬ 
cution of large national policies. 

I might add a further word. We take 
pride in the fact that our national and lo¬ 
cal organizations have conducted them¬ 
selves, generally, within the bounds of the 


WHY I WRITE A BOOK 


17 


strictest discipline. Perhaps it has been 
because of the ease with which crimes might 
be committed and our local organization 
unjustly blamed therefor that we have 
suffered from a certain sort of criticism and 
attack from the uninformed and the misin¬ 
formed . We are now taking steps to make the 
Klan perfectly secure against such criminal 
misuse of its name and regalia. Suffice it to 
say here that we take the keenest pride in 
our record, and in challenging our opponents 
and detractors to present the facts which 
their allegations demand, we ask of them in 
the most kindly spirit. We take much for 
granted. We can not be misunderstood for 
long. We know that many of those who un¬ 
knowingly oppose us to-day will be our 
best friends, in many cases, indeed, our 
ardent companions of to-morrow. 


CHAPTER I 


The Klan Yesterday and To-day 

I N many questions, from all sources, I have 
been asked as to how the Klan of the Six¬ 
ties was related to the Klan of to-day. The 
original Ku Klux Klan sprang from the 
urgent necessities of the Reconstruction 
period. At the close of the War Between the 
States, the South was prostrated and de¬ 
vastation was spread from the Potomac to 
the Rio Grande. Following hard upon the 
collapse of the Southern Confederacy, hordes 
of bad white men, generally termed “Car¬ 
pet-Baggers” and “Scalawags”, came into 
the South to prey upon the prostrated peo¬ 
ple of that section and to fatten on the ruins 
of war. This crowd of men had been loyal 
to neither the Union nor the Confederacy, 
and, in most instances, traitors to both. The 
tremendous upheaval had thrown them from 
obscurity into publicity. They availed 
themselves of the conditions that obtained 
to establish themselves and utilized the re- 






r 



LT. GEN. NATHAN BEDFORD FORREST 
I he Grand Y\ izard of the Original Ku Klux Klan. 












THE KLAN YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY 


19 


cently emancipated race of slaves to further 
their ends. Negroes everywhere were organ¬ 
ized and taught to hate the white people of 
the Southern states. Under martial law 
they controlled all the elections that were 
held in the South. From these was elevated 
to our legislatures and courts an alien race, 
untaught, unskilled and incapable of govern¬ 
ment. White men in the South who had 
borne arms in defense of the Confederacy 
had the hostility of the so-called Union 
League directed against them. Their prop¬ 
erty was invaded, their homes were men¬ 
aced and in many instances the white women 
of the South became the prey of Negroes 
who had been inflamed by the teachings of 
“Carpet-Baggers” and “Scalawags.” The 
evident purpose was to establish for all time 
the supremacy of the Negro over our Anglo- 
Saxon people and civilization. 

To meet this condition and arrest this 
menace, the Ku Klux Klan sprang into ex¬ 
istence. The white man’s civilization that 
had been thousands of years in the building 


20 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


was imperilled. The blood of the white 
man ran like lightning. Tremendous forces 
leaped from the ashes of defeat and drove 
like the whirlwind throughout the land. 
Civilization sounded the note of wild alarm. 
An empire covering half a continent took 
form in an hour and more than a half mil¬ 
lion men were mobilized in a single day in 
defense of the white man, his home, his 
civilization and his freedom—against the rise 
and assaults of an inferior race, many of which 
within the century, had been cannibals, and 
some of which were still speaking the jargon 
of the jungles of Africa. 

In the formation of the original Ku Klux 
Klan there was no thought or purpose in 
the mind of the white men of the South 
which made for the suppression of the mis¬ 
guided Negroes by violence. Wise men they 
were who founded the Invisible Empire and 
directed the movements of its citizenry. 
They knew the superstition of the Negro. 
Interwoven in the Negro’s life, religious, 
social, industrial, was the fantastic belief 


THE KLAN YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY 


21 


in the supernatural and the grotesque. To 
him the ghost was very real and not at all 
unusual in appearance. In all their folk 
tales there was a weird intermingling of 
ghostliness. Rather than intercept by vio¬ 
lence the movement of the Negro toward 
supremacy in the South under the leader¬ 
ship of vicious white men, the Ku Klux 
Klan devoted itself to thwarting the move¬ 
ment by overawing the Negro through 
his superstitions. Had this plan not been 
adopted, the Negro would have been largely 
exterminated. 

This organization of the original Ku Klux 
Klan made a most thrilling chapter in the 
history of the Anglo-Saxon civilization in 
America. It has never been written. The 
organization has been maligned, misrepre¬ 
sented, and misunderstood for more than 
fifty years. The Congress of the United 
States instituted an investigation of the 
Klan that totaled forty-six volumes in re¬ 
ports and findings, but not in a solitary in¬ 
stance was an outrage or an atrocity in the 



22 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


South fastened upon the organization. The 
supremacy of the white man was established, 
the purity of the Anglo-Saxon race was main¬ 
tained, and both races, white and black, 
settled down side by side in peace and con¬ 
tentment to work out their essentially differ¬ 
ent destinies. 

The present Klan is a memorial to the 
original organization, the story of whose valor 
has never been told, and the value of whose 
activities to the American nation has never 
been appreciated. In a sense it is the rein¬ 
carnation among the sons of the spirit of 
the fathers. It is a flaming torch of the 
genius and mission of the Anglo-Saxon 
committed to the hands of the children 
which the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan are 
again holding aloft. 

The name of the old Klan has been taken 
by the new as a heritage. The regalia and 
insignia of the old have been adopted by 
the new as a mantle of one worthy genera¬ 
tion might fall upon the shoulders of its 


THE KLAN YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY 


23 


successor. Beyond this point the con¬ 
nection and similarity between the two 
organizations do not extend. The ritual is 
not identical. The purpose of each organi¬ 
zation, while having a common impulsion, is 
not the same in extent. The old Klan never 
intended to reach beyond the horizon of the 
Southland. The present Klan has purposed 
the supremacy of our heritage of ideals 
throughout the nation. There is no inten¬ 
tion on the part of the present Klan to 
intimidate or overawe by spectral, ghostly 
garb, or to accomplish its aim by demon¬ 
strations of force or acts of violence, or by a 
supergovernment under disguise, or by mov¬ 
ing in the darkness of the night. But there 
is a purpose underlying the entire organi¬ 
zation and pulsing in every fiber of its being, 
to maintain Anglo-Saxon civilization on the 
American continent from submergence due 
to the encroachment and invasion of alien 
people of whatever clime or color. There 
was not in the old organization a soli¬ 
tary motive except to save the civilization of 
the white man that had been wrung out of 


24 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


the thousands of years of his struggle up¬ 
ward. There is not a single motive actuat¬ 
ing the new Klan except to save the heri¬ 
tage which the fathers have left for us in 
the present to transmit to the generation 
yet to come. 

A moment’s reflection will indicate how 
natural it is to see the new Klan take form 
first in the South. With us the issue and 
the conflict is an old one. Instinctively we 
scent dangers which our brethren in other 
sections of the country are apt, as yet, to 
ignore. For centuries we have been forced 
to deal, in one form or another, with a prob¬ 
lem which always seemed to us and still 
appears to some of us to be insoluble. I 
mean the race problem. Yet in this, as in all 
else, our kinship with our fellow citizens of 
the North was made evident by an out¬ 
standing fact of Reconstruction days. The 
original Ku Klux Klan was almost as strong 
in the Union army, maintaining martial law 
in the defeated states, as among the men 
who wore the gray and went down to 


THE KLAN YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY 


25 


glorious defeat. Had it not been for the 
active and sympathetic co-operation of large 
numbers of the Union forces, the achieve¬ 
ments of the Ku Klux Klan in the Recon¬ 
struction period could not have been ac¬ 
complished. The time has now come, once 
more, to bring to our whole country a sense 
of this great issue. And this issue, the causes 
of this crisis, has broadened and deepened 
to a degree which threatens the com¬ 
plete destruction of our civilization. 



CHAPTER II 


We Americans—A Vanishing People 

W E Americans are nothing if not 
humanitarian. We have in the 
United States many varieties of organiza¬ 
tion for the assistance of the various foreign 
racial and national groups upon our soil. We 
have also done not a little for the succor 
of the peoples of the old world who are now in 
such great distress. The larger humanita¬ 
rian motive is as a guiding star to millions of 
Americans. It leads them and lights their 
way. To many such it may seem un¬ 
necessary, to some preposterous, for the 
organization of which I have the honor to 
be chief to be founded and developed. But 
a sober second thought is required here. 
Let us grant that a people which, in its 
weakness, faces permanent injury, requires 
help that it may survive and grow. Then 
indeed, it follows that we Americans, as a 
people, need to help ourselves first of all. 
As a people and a nation we are face to face 



WE AMERICANS—A VANISHING PEOPLE 


27 


with dissolution. In the Ku Klux Klan 
we have an institution designed to help 
in the stupendous task of saving ourselves 
from failing and falling. 

We Americans as a peculiar people face 
extinction upon our own soil. Let me be 
fully understood. I do not wish in the least 
to appear sensational. I wish only to state 
a few simple facts which should be apparent 
to any American who investigates, ever so 
briefly, the true condition of his country. 
So often, during the past twenty-two years, 
I have been oppressed in heart as I have 
seen how little public interest this crucial 
matter has aroused. If my tendency has, 
at times, been somewhat pessimistic and 
fearful, I claim that there is cause enough 
for fear and pessimism. Surely there is 
great need that intensest sadness and sorrow 
strike deep into the hearts of Americans, if 
we are now to help ourselves and live. 

We Americans are a perishing people. 
From the point of view of history we are be- 


28 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


ing wiped from the face of the earth with 
a rapidity which almost staggers hope. First 
let me clearly define what I mean by the 
phase, “We American People.” I mean by 
that phrase those white, native-born citizens 
of this country whose ancestry, birth and 
training has been such as to give them to¬ 
day a full share in the basic principles, the 
ideals and the practice of our American civili¬ 
zation. I do not mean that a foreign-born 
citizen can not be a good citizen. On the con¬ 
trary, many of our foreign-born are excel¬ 
lent citizens. Yet I most positively mean 
what the title at the head of this chapter 
distinctly suggests. We, the American 
people, we whose breed fought through the 
Revolutionary War and the War Between 
the States, the people by whose courage 
the great American wilderness was pene¬ 
trated, and by whose painstaking industry 
that wilderness was subjugated and made 
fruitful—that this people, who gave to the 
world Washington and Franklin, Jefferson 
and Hamilton, Andrew Jackson and Daniel 
Webster, Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lin- 


WE AMERICANS—A VANISHING PEOPLE 


29 


coin—this people, our people, is on the down¬ 
ward way to the early ending of its remark¬ 
able history. The mighty length and breadth 
of the soil made sacred by our struggles and 
our victories is now being given over, with 
ever greater rapidity, to various peoples of 
a totally different mold. I am not saying 
that these other peoples are bad in character 
or in any way unworthy. May Heaven 
witness for my colleagues and myself of the 
Ku Klux Klan that we bear them no ill will 
whatsoever. I hope that none of us as 
individuals or as an organization may do 
them aught but good. We wish, above all, 
to be moved in all things by that Christian 
spirit upon which our organization is found¬ 
ed, and which, I trust, moves its humblest 
member. But we have come to sound a 
warning throughout the length and breadth 
of the land—a warning which everyone of 
our own people from Newfoundland to 
California and from Florida to Alaska 
must hear and heed. We are perishing as a 
people and the land of our fathers shall 



30 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


presently know us no more. Emerson once 
said, “What you do speaks so loud I can 
not hear what you say.” Let me here 
change the words but not the meaning. The 
facts cry out so loud that we can not hear 
the vain and wordy opinions of the theorists 
and the sentimentalists. The prattle of these 
sentimentalists, be it ever so noisy, can not 
prevent us from both seeing and hearing 
the real drama. We are witnessing the great¬ 
est tragedy of the ages. 

To place these facts in their proper re¬ 
lation, one to another, we must study the 
map of the United States. That map, hang¬ 
ing on the wall of the old school-house, or 
facing us over our desks in the library at 
home, seems always to appear so big and 
brave and bold. To the child at school it 
appears to flaunt its very bigness in the face 
of all the world. My fellow American citi¬ 
zens in all the states, study that map care¬ 
fully. In terms of the civilization of the 
whole world it will richly repay investiga¬ 
tion. Let us move with the sun from the 












































































Only Americans May Pass 







WE AMERICANS—A VANISHING PEOPLE 


31 


valley of the river St. Johns in Maine, to 
the far-off mountains of our California. In¬ 
coming masses by the hundred thousand 
flood New England. They do not speak 
our language, can not know our laws, and 
do not mix with our native people because 
there are hardly any natives in New Eng¬ 
land left to mix with. In dozens of schools 
built for the children of the great city of 
Boston and its suburbs the English lan¬ 
guage is not even taught, not to speak of as 
being used as a means of acquiring knowl¬ 
edge or of taking loyal and useful part in 
our national life. Throughout twenty 
varieties of the stupendous foreign sections 
in all our great industrial cities of the North, 
the very conditions of life prevent millions 
from learning the English language or tak¬ 
ing an American breath into their nostrils. 
From St. Louis and Chicago and Milwaukee 
on the West to New York and Boston on 
the East democratic American political 
life is now almost impossible—unthinkable. 
To this we shall recur in later chapters. Just 
now we must proceed rapidly to other parts 



32 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


of our map. In our Far Western territory, 
where a million square miles of mountain 
and valley are beginning a marvelous de¬ 
velopment, we Americans are fighting one 
of the most desperate and crucial social 
conflicts in the history of our country and 
of European civilization. Our Western people 
are striving for the very salvation of our 
soil as the heritage of the white American. 
This conflict rages day by dav—week by 
week—year by year. Our brethren of the 
West are misunderstood and their crying 
call for help is largely rejected by the East. 
There are counties in California where more 
Japanese babies are being born each year 
than white babies. The Japanese in Cal¬ 
ifornia are multiplying at the stupendous 
rate of sixty-nine per thousand, annually, 
while the white people of California in¬ 
crease at the rate of eighteen per thousand. 
But the eighteen per cent, includes the rel¬ 
atively high rate of the foreign-born whites. 
The American white people of California 
increase by an annual rate of less than ten 




WE AMERICANS—A VANISHING PEOPLE 


33 


per thousand. Look you well, fellow Ameri¬ 
cans, to this part of our map. Go on in your 
indifference and carelessness, and these 
western valleys and mountains will, in the 
days of your children, be blood-soaked by 
one of the most desperate of interracial wars 
—a war at once civil and international—in 
the history of the world, and despite all 
your treaties of peace. 

In the Southwest are over eighteen hun¬ 
dred miles of boundary line between ourselves 
and the people of Mexico. I know that I am 
expressing for my colleagues of the Ku Klux 
Klan who dwell along that eighteen hun¬ 
dred miles of boundary line their inmost 
thought, when I say that they wish only 
peace and fellowship and mutual aid and 
generosity to mark all our relations with the 
simple and kindly people of Mexico. But 
we are here marshalling the facts—the stag¬ 
gering facts which the American people must 
know and ponder well to-day. Nearly half 
a million Mexicans, speaking various dia¬ 
lects of the Spanish and Indian languages, 





34 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


have recently come across our Southwestern 
boundary line. Surely it is not with any 
ill will in our hearts that we say with all the 
power we have that these thousands can 
not share our American democracy with us 
in this generation. In Mexico these people 
can be ruled in such a way and take such 
measures of progress as may befit them. 
Granted time and they may evolve a suc¬ 
cessful democracy all their own. But in 
this generation they will make democracy 
impossible wherever large numbers of them 
settle among us. If immigration continues 
through the next generation THEY WILL 
FOREVER ENCROACH UPON AND OC¬ 
CUPY OUR SOUTHWEST. The native- 
born, white American will either become a 
small ruling class, or fade from sight al¬ 
together. There are factories in Texas with 
practically none but Mexicans employed. 
There are sections of the Southwest where, 
in town and on the countryside, there are 
many Negroes, Mexicans and Japanese, 
few Americans. 

Finally, we come to the South. Leaving 
the burden of this argument to future 


WE AMERICANS—A VANISHING PEOPLE 


35 


chapters, we can here take but a rapid 
glance at the inexorable problem of the 
Southland. May Providence give to us men 
and women of the South the power we need 
to place our problem before our fellow 
citizens in other sections in such a way as to 
win their minds and hearts by the goodness 
of our cause. If I but could, I would move 
my hand along that ancient and deadly 
line which separates us from our country¬ 
men and wipe it out forever. Our problem of 
the Negro, men and women of the North, is 
your problem. If we fail, you fail. We plead 
with you to join with us in freeing all our 
minds from bigotry, all our hearts from un¬ 
worthy passions, and all our thoughts from 
sectional misunderstanding. 

The larger fact which I seek in this con¬ 
nection to strike into the mind and con¬ 
science of my country is as simple as the 
multiplication-table. The Negro of to-day 
is less in numbers than the white inhabitants 
in all states but one, for a single reason. 
That reason is the high average mortality 


36 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


among the Negroes. The enormous birth 
rate of the Negro population would rapidly 
submerge our white population if the Negroes 
were not decimated by a high death rate. 
The Negroes' numbers are kept within the 
number of our white population by various 
dreadful diseases. Though these diseases 
afflict us all in the South, the white people 
are generally far more immune than the 
blacks. We are somewhat behind the 
North and West in the practice of medi¬ 
cine, sanitation, and the general preven¬ 
tion of disease. But we are making great 
strides in this as in other means of progress. 
As all our people, including the Negroes, 
are progressively saved from the ravages of 
disease, the Negroes’ birth rate will be more 
and more relentlessly shown in the census 
of the living. As night follows day, the 
Negro will, in the future, move on toward 
larger and larger comparative numbers in 
the South. 

And so this map of our beloved land, 
which, as school children, we gazed upon 


WE AMERICANS—A VANISHING PEOPLE 


37 


with deep longings toward the future great¬ 
ness of our country—this map to-day, section 
by section, is discolored and fading. So do 
our hopes, too, fade and fail. We Americans 
are a perishing people, and the things we 
have inherited and hold dearest in our 
hearts are on the way to dissolution and 
total loss. Of all the greater people of his¬ 
tory, we Americans least deserve even the 
pity which is the portion of those who fail. 
The glory of our rise, the large part that is 
ours in the present, the majestic hope of the 
nation which prophesies such a resplendent 
future—all this is our heritage. We lack i 
only understanding of ourselves and the 
public spirit required to take action. The 
Ku Klux Klan, in garb of strange device, 
marshalled under the flag of our country, 
has thrust itself as a dire warning across 
the downward pathway of the American 
people—our own people, whom we love. 




CHAPTER III 


The Fraternalism of the Klan 

S URELY there can not be in this frank 
statement of the principles and the 
purposes of the Ku Klux Klan any ground 
for the criticism that the organization was 
founded on racial and sectarian animosities 
and hatreds. The Klan is neither anti- 
racial nor anti-sectarian. It is pro-American. 
We concede to every distinctive organization 
in race and religion the same rights of re¬ 
stricting and qualifying its membership that 
we claim for ourselves. If, in the light of all 
the past, and in view of the present, we are 
insisting upon an organization of native- 
born white American citizens, we do not, 
by stipulating the conditions of member¬ 
ship in the Ku Klux Klan, avow hostility 
to any one class or company who may not, 
for one reason or another, qualify for 
membership in our organization. Indeed, as 
Americans we not only have the right to 
organize under the law and in keeping with the 


THE FRATERNALISM OF THE KLAN 


39 


law, but far more than that—in the exercise 
of that right the Klan is positively com¬ 
mitted to vouchsafing the same right to any 
other class of people on the American con¬ 
tinent who desire to organize themselves for 
patriotic, social, fraternal or religious pur¬ 
poses. Only this too is also stoutly main¬ 
tained: Any organization that is formed and 
fostered under the flag of our common coun¬ 
try must not be inimical to our democratic 
government and institutions. 

There are numerous organizations in 
America to which members of the Klan 
would not be admitted. These organiza¬ 
tions are racial, social, political and secta¬ 
rian. There has never been any complaint 
against these organizations. They have 
never been subjected to scrutiny by the 
Department of Justice of the United States 
Government. They have never been brought 
under Congressional investigation. They have 
lived and grown and pursued their purposes 
of organization without restraint or inter¬ 
ference from the outside. All this is in 


40 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


exact keeping with the freedom that is 
granted under the Constitution and the 
laws. We realize only too well that when 
organizations have arisen that have threat¬ 
ened the peace or morals or health of our 
social life, or, for any purpose, inveighed 
against the basic institutions of our country 
or the orderly conduct of our people in 
obedience to constituted authority, such 
organizations have been speedily suppressed. 
There are not a few of the leaders of such 
movements in the penal institutions of our 
country to-day, designated as political 
prisoners, because they undertook to ob¬ 
struct the machinery of the country in its 
war activities. The Ku Klux Klan is com¬ 
mitted so thoroughly—nothing remaining 
uncommitted—to the full freedon of human 
life guaranteed under the Constitution to 
American citizens that it can never inter¬ 
fere with the rights of groups or individuals 
outside its ranks. It stands everywhere 
against disorderly and disruptive move¬ 
ments which deny the authority of the 
government and disobey its mandates 



THE FRATERNALISM OF THE KLAN 


41 


whether in time of war or peace. If there 
is one thing, more than any other, which we 
Americans must now devoutly take to heart 
it is obedience to law. Perhaps we are right¬ 
ly accused by Europeans of being quite the 
most lawless among civilized nations. This 
is indicated by nothing so much as by the 
series of terribJe race riots which have dis¬ 
graced some of our great cities during recent 
years—notably Atlanta, Washington, East 
St. Louis, Chicago and Omaha. Space limits 
us here to the description of a single case 
in which the Klan has been involved. At 
a small town in Florida, a terrible race riot 
was precipitated on election day, 1920. It 
was reported that one or more Negroes, dis¬ 
qualified by law from voting, were never¬ 
theless demanding that they be permitted 
to vote. This incident led to others, and 
resulted in a terrible race riot. More than a 
score of persons, mostly Negroes, were 
killed. The white men, having defeated 
and dispersed the Negroes of their own com¬ 
munity, thoroughly inflamed, proceeded, 
late in the day, to march upon- 



42 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


-, for the purpose of attacking the 

Negroes of that community. The Klans- 

men notified by a member of the-Klan, 

of the approach of a force of armed whites, 
armed themselves and placed their services 
at the disposal of the officers of the law. 
They met the oncoming force just outside 
the limits of their own town. Unhappily, 
the attackers were not turned back without 
an armed conflict. In this affray two 
Klansmen were killed. The mob was driven 
back. The Klansmen lost their lives in de¬ 
fense of the law and while protecting the 
Negroes of their town. 

On another occasion one of the largest 
and soundest local Klans ever founded by 
our organizers was instantly dissolved, be¬ 
cause our rules and regulations in these 
things were violated. The Klan in question 
wished to find a remedy for a serious local 
disorder. A tradesman in the community 
was conducting a thriving bootlegging 
establishment which grew to be a scandal 
to the whole town. The Klan, recently 




THE FRATERNALISM OF THE KLAN 


43 


organized, and not fully comprehending 
our methods, posted notices warning the 
culprit to leave town. They emphasized their 
warning by posting along side certain signs 
of the Ku Klux Klan. For this interference 
with the orderly process of justice in this 
case the local Klan in question was quickly 
disbanded by our headquarters. 

With this and other similar incidents in 
mind the reader may well imagine the 
thoughts and feelings of Klansmen every¬ 
where when they are told that their organ¬ 
ization has been founded for the purpose of 
“Lynching Niggers.” We have been accused 
of crimes in towns where we had no local 
Klan within hundreds of miles. In such 
cases the lynching accusations are often 
carried on the wings of great organizations 
of the press. Our denials we find ineffectual. 
But of this I am certain: The truth will 
sometimes overtake the lies and the evil 
will recoil on the heads of the evil-doers. 

But in addition to the purely patriotic 
principles of the Klan, which are fundamen- 


44 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


tal, it is a fraternal organization. A Charter 
for the Klan was granted by the State of 
Georgia. All of its activities are subject to 
scrutiny by the State and review by properly 
constituted authority. The Charter may 
be revoked at the will of the State. Where- 
ever irregularities are shown in the conduct 
of the Klan, or wherever the Klan departs 
from the purposes of its organization as set 
forth in the Charter, the Klan may be dis¬ 
banded by due process of law. It is there¬ 
fore not an organization that has sprung up 
over night, without responsibility, claiming 
independence of the law of the land. 

The Klan offers its membership a gradu¬ 
ate course in fraternalism. There are several 
orders administered and each of these 
orders marks an advance in devotion to our 
common country and in those fraternal 
relations and responsibilities which bind us 
to our fellow men. There can be nothing in 
this organization, as there is nothing in the 
many fraternal organizations in this country, 
that is inimical to the highest sense of 


THE FRATERNALISM OF THE KLAN 


45 


social order. Indeed, underlying the fra- 
ternalism of the Klan is a consecration to 
the American home, the preservation of its 
sanctity and the maintenance of ideal family 
life. From this a sympathetic helpfulness 
flows out to those in distress and discourage¬ 
ment, and a force of strong men is thrown 
about the weak and helpless without re¬ 
spect to color or creed. This is the service 
of love and sacrifice to our age and genera¬ 
tion which is symbolized by the fiery cross. 


CHAPTER IV 


The Klanishness of The Klan 

I T is perhaps not only proper but also 
necessary, in view of the vigorous and 
persistent attacks made on the Klan, to dis¬ 
cuss more fully the apparent exclusiveness of 
the organization. I desire to reiterate with 
emphasis that the Klan is a purely American 
organization assembled around the Con¬ 
stitution of the United States, to safeguard 
its provisions, advance its purposes, and per¬ 
petuate its democracy. This definition of 
the Klan in its organization necessarily 
carries the idea of exclusiveness. All men 
without respect to race, color and religion 
may not be organized into a democracy. 
Democracy can not be established by out¬ 
side pressure. It is something which must 
be developed in the individual conscious¬ 
ness, and is of very slow growth. We speak 
loosely when we talk of the Anglo-Saxon 
having grown into a democracy through a 
thousand years of struggle. Five thousand 


THE KLANISHNESS OF THE KLAN 


47 


years would be a more accurate statement 
of the fact. During all the slow processes of 
the development of the white man’s civil¬ 
ization, there was something inherent in 
his life that slowly pushed its way up into 
the consciousness of the individual until 
it found expression in constitutional govern¬ 
ment, in freedom of thought and speech, 
and in all the elements of political and re¬ 
ligious liberty. One of the most developed 
expressions of this growth into democracy 
is our American Government with all its 
complexities and intricacies. It should go 
without saying that all men, without refer¬ 
ence to origin or history, can not be thrust 
into this country, and, under restraint and 
repression, be forced into our ways of think¬ 
ing and living and so attain the true value 
of American citizenship. To begin with, a 
great many people, living under one form of 
autocracy or another, have never been 
awakened to a sense of and desire for de¬ 
mocracy. In others the sense has begun to 
stir, but has not had the opportunity or 
the time for that sure growth that would 


48 


THE ICLAN UNMASKED 


transform them into a citizenship capable 
of pure self-government. 

This fact has been demonstrated by the 
futility of the attempts in Russia, first under 
the administration of Kerensky and now 
under Lenine and Trotsky. The bolshevist 
camarilla attempted to take that nation, 
which has been subjected for ages to one 
of the simplest and meanest despotisms on 
earth, and organize it into a sort of democ¬ 
racy. This proposition is still further il¬ 
luminated by the experience of Germany in 
her attempt to build a democracy on the 
ruins of her old autocracy. The best thinkers 
in the German nation, notwithstanding the 
superior intellectual, economical and in¬ 
dustrial qualifications of the people, pre¬ 
dict that a real democracy can not be 
established in Germany in less than fifty 
years. If these two nations, both white, the 
one having the most robust physical man¬ 
hood in the world, and the other the most 
vigorous mentality, can not rise from autoc¬ 
racy into democracy, how absurd it ap- 







The “Starry” Flag and the “Fiery” Cross Shall Not Fail 

















THE KLANISHNESS OF THE KLAN 


49 


pears that we should take great masses of 
the untaught, underfed, inferior people of 
all the lands and undertake to precipitate 
them, in masses, into our very peculiar 
and intricate national democracy. 

The Klan, organized to protect and ad¬ 
vance the cause of our native institutions, 
is therefore exclusive in the restriction of 
its membership to white native-born Ameri¬ 
cans. We believe that only one born on 
x^merican soil, surrounded by American 
institutions, taught in the American schools, 
harmonized from infancy with American 
ideals, can become fully conscious of what 
our peculiar democracy means and be 
adequately qualified for all the duties of 
citizenship in this republic. 

In order to become a member of the Klan 
one must subscribe without reservation of 
any sort to the Constitution of the United 
States. Loyalty to the Constitution must be 
so thorough that no ultimate allegiance to 
any foreign institution, power or country 


50 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


can be retained. Committal to American¬ 
ism is so absolute that nothing is left un¬ 
committed. The Ku Klux Klan is patri¬ 
otic to the last and highest degree. We 
believe that the principles upon which this 
republic was founded, and around which 
the great War Between the States was 
waged, should be constantly reaffirmed and 
emphasized. 

The American nation has acted as a 
great magnet. The American city in par¬ 
ticular has been an irresistible lure to the 
unhappy and oppressed peoples of the world. 
From all shores great tides of immigration 
have flowed in upon us. The alien peoples 
have not been distributed over the vast 
area of our common country, but have, for 
the most part, been congested in our great 
centers. Many of them can not read and 
write their own language. On the average 
they are three times as prone to pauperism 
and nine times as prone to crime as our 
native-born Americans. Because of their 
numbers, as well as their nationalistic ten- 


THE KLANISHNESS OF THE KLAN 


51 


dencies, they organize themselves into sep¬ 
arate communities and often breed hostility 
to American institutions. How natural 
that such foreign communities should spawn 
all forms of social and political vices. 

Of course this plethora of population 
violates the fundamental law of our social 
life. This nation grew strong and took on 
its peculiar virtues out in the open fields 
and under the gleaming stars. Granting 
that the possibilities of democracy are in¬ 
herent in many of these aliens that have 
been admitted into our country, the pos¬ 
sibilities can not now be realized in the 
great cities of the nation. We believe that 
one can never be wholly patriotic or thor¬ 
oughly democratized until he obeys God’s 
great first commandment and settles upon 
some spot of ground and subdues it and 
makes it yield its secrets and its wealth. 
Permit these people that have come to us to 
segregate in cities by race and tongue, and 
continue to live in squalor and dirt, often 
accursed by disease and ignorance, foreign 


52 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


in habit and thought and pursuit, under¬ 
standing our country only as an unrestrict¬ 
ed opportunity for license, and it presents 
the gravest problems that our nation was 
ever called upon to solve. This is especially 
true since these aliens have been permitted 
to qualify for citizenship and given suffrage 
within a space of time so short that they 
can not even become acquainted with the 
outward manners and customs of the Amer¬ 
ican people, not to mention the basic intel¬ 
lectual and spiritual factors of our national 
consciousness. 

More than fifty per cent, of the votes 
cast in the last presidential election were 
cast by cities. For the first time in the 
history of this country the urban popu¬ 
lation exceeds the rural. This vast alien 
population now holds and exercises the 
balance of political power. HERE IS A 
CHALLENGE WITH TRUMPET VOICE 
TO EVERY NATIVE-BORN AMERICAN 
TO FACE THE CRISIS AND PRE- 


THE KLANISHNESS OF THE KLAN 


53 


SERVE OUR DEMOCRACY FOR THE 
GENERATIONS TO COME. 

One other condition is imposed on all men 
who would be associated with the Klan, 
and that is subscription to the tenets of 
Christianity. We are in no sense a re¬ 
ligious organization. There is no purpose 
of founding what has been suggested by our 
critics, a new American church. The Klan 
does not interfere, through membership, 
with any man’s interpretation of religious 
truth or his connection with any branch or 
denomination of the Christian church. In 
fact, the Klan has nothing to do with dog¬ 
ma, creed, or ritual. Yet the Klan does in¬ 
sist that every man becoming a member 
shall strive to carry himself by the code of 
conduct promulgated by Jesus Christ. It 
is a high standard of living that the Klan 
undertakes to maintain, and at the very 
threshold of the organization one must 
accept this highest standard of ethics and 
morals that the world has ever known. 


54 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


There are many who can not accept these 
stern conditions. But certainly it is not an 
arbitrary discrimination against any class, 
or sect, or race. We believe that, interwoven 
into the entire fabric of real Americanism, 
are the principles of Christianity. Reverent 
recognition of this fact has been made in 
the Bills of Right and in nearly every state 
constitution of the Union. In 1895 the 
Supreme Court of the United States, in a 
decision on the Alien Labor Contract Law, 
declared this to be a Christian nation, and 
the Court was very careful to establish its 
decision by referring explicitly to the prin¬ 
ciples and declarations of Christianity which 
run through all the organic laws of the 
country. So, believing as we do, that our 
patriotic principles and Christianity are 
inseparable and indivisible, we hold stead¬ 
fastly to the Constitution and the Sermon 
on the Mount. It goes without saying that 
men who repudiate either can not look for 
fellowship in the Klan. 


CHAPTER V 


Is The Klan Anti-Semitic 

R eferring to the exclusiveness of 
the Klan, I am not quite prepared to 
admit that the conditions stipulated for 
membership in the organization set up the 
insuperable barrier that some people sus¬ 
pect. It has been pointed outin many hostile 
criticisms that the Semitic race is exclud¬ 
ed from membership in the Klan. It is not 
true, for instance, that the Klan has set up 
arbitrary barriers to the admission of the 
Hebrew; but it is true that the orthodox 
Hebrew has established around himself bar¬ 
riers that preclude his admission into the 
organization. 

The orthodox Jews are perhaps the most 
exclusive people in the civilized world. 
Their racial pride exceeds the pride of any 
nation or any land. They have a right to be 
proud in view of all their history. The He¬ 
brew literature, the Hebrew religion, the 


56 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


Hebrew commonwealth, and more than all, 
the Hebrew jurisprudence, much of which 
has been adopted by our western society, 
entitles the race to hold to its distinctive 
qualities and characteristics with a pride 
that all the world respects and admires. 
They have everywhere been a peculiar 
people. Because of marked racial distinct¬ 
iveness, not to say eminence, they have 
drawn a boundary line about their social 
and religious life, shutting themselves in 
and the rest of mankind out. 

Perhaps there is no patriotism in the 
world comparable to that of the Jew. His 
attachment to his ancient home-land and 
to his institutions has been through the ages 
a consuming passion. In the early history 
of his development, when defeated in war, 
reduced to slavery and crushed under 
mountainous oppression, his loyalty to his 
country and his creed never wavered. There 
is no picture in history more pathetic and, 
indeed, more inspiring than that of the Jew 
in bondage. Toiling in the brickyards of 


IS THE KLAN ANTI-SEMITIC? 


57 


Goshen, taunted with the despoiled glory 
of his country, the taskmaster demanding, 
as the burning lash was laid upon his bared 
shoulders, that he sing the songs of his native 
land, his intrepid spirit was unconquered 
and his superb loyalty unbroken: ‘‘If I 
forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right 
hand forget its cunning, and if I do not esteem 
thee above my chiefest joy, let my tongue 
cleave unto the roof of my mouth.” 

The Jew has brought his religion to Amer¬ 
ica, establishing his temple worship and 
clinging tenaciously to his creed of Theism. 
He has been welcomed with a hospitality 
such as has been tendered the Jew by no 
other nation. His religious institutions have 
had all the protection of the law thrown 
about them, and they have been covered 
by the broad mantle of American liberalism. 
He has been granted the right to worship 
Almighty God according to the dictates of 
his own conscience, with none to molest 
him or make him afraid. But he has or¬ 
ganized in America no system of evangelism 


58 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


to convey his religious message to the 
people without the pale. He has made no 
proselytes or attempted to make any. He 
has held his church exclusively for himself 
and his posterity. To the orthodox Jew his 
religion is entirely an expression of his 
nationality. He has never invited men 
without creed to inquire into his dogmas 
and his doctrines. Indeed, he has held to 
his religion as a heritage that belongs to the 
Jew and to which none other than a Jew 
could subscribe as a matter of right or even 
as a privilege. A highly intelligent and in¬ 
fluential Gentile sect, the Unitarians, has 
built its religious life about the doctrine of 
Theism. There are no fundamental or 
essential differences between the orthodoxy 
of the Jew and that of this Gentile sect, but 
even the Gentile theist has had no invi¬ 
tation to Judaism, and has been tendered 
scant cordiality by this proud, exclusive 
race that took its religion from the visible 
and audible presence of Jehovah and pre¬ 
served it inviolate for themselves and for 
their kind. 


IS THE KLAN ANTI-SEMITIC? 


59 


In coming to America the orthodox Jew 
has brought with him all the racial pride 
that distinguishes him throughout the ages. 
He does not undertake to mingle his social 
life with that of the native people of the 
country, nor does he invite those of other 
racial lineage to cross his threshold. He 
marries and intermarries only with his 
kind. If the offspring of the orthodox Jew 
marries a Gentile he is excommunicated 
with drastic and fearful ceremony. So does 
the Jew keep himself apart. Even in the 
remote and sparsely populated sections of 
the country, where a single Jewish family is 
established in a village or at a crossroads, 
selling merchandise, when the time comes 
for the marrying of his children, he does not 
seek or desire that the people with whom 
he has been trading, or that the children 
with whom his children have been taught 
in the common schools, shall be introduced 
into Jewish family life. Ele seeks to mate his 
children with members of his own race, 
even though the mating has to be done at 
long range. Sometimes a suitable husband 


60 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


for a marriageable daughter, or an ac¬ 
ceptable wife for a marriageable son, has to 
be obtained in New York or Chicago or 
San Francisco, from a thousand to three 
thousand miles away. 

Perhaps this Jew has understood for 
ages what some of our American sociol¬ 
ogists will not learn from biology; that is, 
that the amalgamation of two distinctive 
race types may lose, in the offspring, much 
of the distinctive good of both. A people of 
mixed race is long in establishing both the 
fact and the sense of unity. Its individual 
minds tend to instability. Witness, for 
instance, the results due to the divergent 
people who inhabit Ireland. Racial sta¬ 
bility, as a biological fact in the realm of 
psychology, is a precious result, perfected 
only by long, very long unity of blood. A 
mixed race finds, for a long period, difficulty 
in attaining individual balance and social 
peace. With the orthodox Jew another 
racial purpose inclines him, with relentless 


IS THE KLAN ANTI-SEMITIC? 


61 


will, toward racial segregation. His people 
are the chosen of Almighty God. They listen 
through the centuries for the voices of 
angels proclaiming the advent of the true 
Messiah. To mix his blood with that of the 
Gentile is to lose his vision, his hope and his 
immortal soul. 

The Klan organizes itself around the 
principles of Christianity, which diverge 
widely from the principles of Jewish ortho¬ 
doxy. If it requires that those seeking ad¬ 
mission into the organization should sub¬ 
scribe to the tenets that are Christian, it 
can not be construed into hostility toward 
the Jewish race. We believe that, side by 
side, a few Jews and many Christians, or a 
few Christians and many Jews may live in 
peace and contentment. For in either case 
the minority can never, by power of number, 
challenge the basic things of civilization ol 
the majority. Let me here emphasize with 
all the power I possess: in America the Jew 
must ultimately mix with the Gentile. One 
million Jewish immigrants and their ed- 


62 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


scendants can be, and will be, through the 
centuries, absorbed into the great body of 
our American people. Here we touch upon 
the true cause of the modern Zionism. His 
exclusiveness forbade the Egyptian, the 
Babylonian, the Roman, and the Russian, 
to destroy his racial identity. To-day he is 
surrendering in Western Europe and Amer¬ 
ica to the liberalism of the younger genera¬ 
tion of Jews and the neighborliness of the 
modern Gentile. Liberalism and American¬ 
ization will eventually break down the ex¬ 
clusiveness of even so large a number as we 
now have among us. But if practically 
free immigration continues and five millions, 
or ten millions, of Jews come to us within 
the next generation—then we shall have a 
people within a people, a state within a 
state, and the sad conditions of Poland or 
Roumama will be re-enacted in America. 
A two per cent. Jewish population can be, 
ultimately, thoroughly Americanized. A 
ten per cent. Jewish population will lead us 
from danger unto danger. We shall have 
absolute Jewish separatism on the one hand, 



IS THE KLAN ANTI-SEMITIC: 


63 


and anti-Semitism on the other. We shall 
then witness all those profound and terrible 
reactions which relentlessly mark the sharp 
contacts of two vitally different societies 
upon the same soil. I submit that when 
the Klan as an organization, holding to the 
tenets of Christianity, provided that any 
white native-born American who sub¬ 
scribes to its conditions may enter into the 
Klan, the Jew was not arbitrarily excluded. 
In fact, there are some native-born American 
Jews who have accepted Christianity and 
have at the same time become eligible to 
membership in the Klan. But the hard and 
fast racial organization of the orthodox 
Jew does not permit him to go outside of 
prescribed boundaries in either his social 
or his religious life. We have not excluded 
the Jew. The orthodox Jew has excluded 
himself. 

The Klan not only protests that it is not 
anti-Semitic. The Klan seeks the execution 
of a policy which will prevent the growth of 
anti-Semitism in America. 


CHAPTER VI 


Is The Klan Anti-Catholic? 

HE Catholic colony of Maryland, 



JL under the Calverts, was composed oi 
a most excellent type of freedom-loving 
Englishmen. Cardinal Gibbons, who re¬ 
cently passed to his reward, was a fine ex¬ 
ample of this type. These people were seek¬ 
ing, as were so many others who then came 
to America, liberation from tyranny, big¬ 
otry, and intolerance. They brought with 
them a spirit not unlike that of the Cava¬ 
liers to the south of them, to whom their 
destiny was to be indissolubly linked by 
ties that remain unbroken to this day. 
These brave Catholic settlers in the wilder¬ 
ness, many of whom were people of re¬ 
finement and education, invested them¬ 
selves wholeheartedly in the early develop¬ 
ment ol our country. No well-informed 
student of American history doubts that 
their large contributions to our American 





\ 




Klankrest—Home Donated to William Joseph Simmons by Klansmen of the Nation “As a 

Token of Love and Esteem.” 







IS THE KLAN ANTI-CATHOLIC? 


65 


nation have seldom enough been sufficient¬ 
ly recognized. 

In the great battle of Long Island, in the 
summer of 1776, Washington stood upon an 
eminence and watched the Maryland brigade 
as it strove to cut its way through the en¬ 
circling forces of the British. “Good God, 
what brave fellows I must this day lose,” 
he said, as he observed their desperate 
position. Later in the day, when he saw 
them fall, like the leaves of Autumn, he is 
said to have wept ov;er the loss of the very 
elite of his army. Of such stuff as this were 
the Maryland Catholics in the American 
Revolution. The historian, John Fiske, de¬ 
scribes that terrible and unhappy day 
(Battle of Long Island, 1776) as follows: 
“In this noble struggle, the highest honors 
were won by the brigade of Maryland men, 
commanded by Smallwood, and through¬ 
out the war we shall find this honorable 
distinction of Maryland for the personal 
gallantry of her troops fully sustained, 
until in the last pitched battle, at Eutaw 


66 


THE KLAN UNMASKED * 


Springs, we see them driving the finest 
infantry of England at the point of the 
bayonets.” 

Just a word more with reference to this 
sort of American Catholic. In the spring 
of 1921 a distinguished assembly of edu¬ 
cators and savants, representing nearly 
every country, assembled with the Uni¬ 
versity alumni to celebrate the hundredth 
anniversary of the founding of the Uni¬ 
versity of Virginia. The opening prayer of 
the first public meeting was offered by the 
Catholic Bishop of Richmond. In that in¬ 
vocation the Bishop returned thanks to 
Almighty God for that great deed of Thomas 
Jefferson which led to the separation of 
Church and State in Virginia. 

To such Catholics as these all true Amer¬ 
icans, whatever their religious beliefs, are 
bound by ties so indissoluble as to make 
perfect our fellowship in Americanism. It 
is to this section of Roman Catholic 
believers, no matter what their ancestry 



IS THE KLAN ANTI-CATHOLIC? 


67 


may be, that the Klan makes especial ap¬ 
peal for understanding and co-operation. 

Catholic Maryland won for herself the 
high distinction of being among the three 
colonies which permitted and protected 
religious freedom. So we can acclaim the 
Catholic colonists as among the very first 
to realize the full meaning of Americanism, 
not only as to the outward things of govern¬ 
ment, but also as to the inner things of the 
human soul. It should not be forgotten, 
too, that these same advocates of political 
liberty and freedom of conscience were them¬ 
selves grossly offended and injured for a 
time in their own colony by a period of 
Protestant oppression. American history is 
a strange, strange story. To understand our 
America of the present, and her problems, 
we must look deep into the records of the 
past. With an unbiased mind we must set 
ourselves to seek out the truth. 

In the State of Maryland one still finds 
in remote hamlets the original Catholic 


68 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


edifices, with their sacred symbols, gracing 
the countryside. Wherever we find such an 
American Catholic church, the American 
public school is seen in the immediate vicin¬ 
ity. When the American Catholic in Mary¬ 
land, or in any other state, goes to the 
ballot-box, he votes as an American citizen^ 
not being under ecclesiastical control. We 
members of the Ku Klux Klan, positively 
insist upon making this distinction among 
Catholics. We ask, and who can say that 
we ask too much, that our whole Catholic 
population bring its American citizenship 
up to these high standards set by the 
original American Catholics. When this 
is done, we shall surely find the greatest 
pleasure in rendering to the Catholic Church 
that full measure of esteem which shall be 
its due. 

During the past two generations great 
submerging waves of European immigrants 
have rolled in upon us. One wave brought 
with it loyalty to the German Kaiser and 
treason to America. Another wave threaten- 


IS THE KLAN ANTI-CATHOLIC? 


69 


ed to smother our working people with the 
noxious poison of Bolshevism. Still another 
sought to make a bitter animosity toward 
England and the British Empire the main¬ 
spring of all its political and social activ¬ 
ities in America. Is there anything remark¬ 
able, anything inexplicable, about the fact 
that millions of illiterate peasants from the 
more backward parts of Europe, if they 
happen to be Roman Catholics, should 
continue among us their backward European 
methods? The peasantry of Poland were, 
until the Great War, practically a serf 
population. Why deny the most evident 
facts? They are still, in general, verminous 
and insanitary, illiterate and stupid. The 
theory that they can quickly be made into 
Americans is the thought of a fool. The 
view that their church can conduct itself 
like the American Catholic church in Mary¬ 
land is equally ridiculous. 

This immigrant element has been mis¬ 
used in two ways. Its clergy has kept it 
ignorant of America by keeping its children 



70 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


out of our public schools; and it has been 
used in our elections as a mass vote by 
those who exercise control over its votes 
through the political power of the church. 

With reference to the public schools our 
American position is as simple as it can 
possibly be. Having established the public- 
school system as the veritable cornerstone 
of the nation’s democracy, we request, in 
the most brotherly spirit, all our im¬ 
migrant peoples to give it whole-hearted 
support. We invite their children to sit 
beside our own children and receive the 
education needed to insure their good citi¬ 
zenship, their self-support, and their self- 
respect. And then there are those who say 
that we of the Klan hate the immigrant and 
seek to deny him his rights! 

These immigrant children, sitting side by 
side in the same school, will be received as 
guests in one another’s homes. They will 
form those deep and lasting friendships 
which will make for true social unity. When 


IS THE KLAN ANTI-CATHOLIC? 


71 


we open our arms and our hearts to receive 
them and to give them all we have, it is 
they who reject us. They deny themselves 
the best gift we can possibly offer—a free 
public education. How often are we Amer¬ 
icans made unhappy—sometimes, I fear, a 
bit displeased—when we see on one side of 
the street a beautiful, spacious and sanitary 
public-school building, and on the other 
side of the street a poorly constructed, in¬ 
sanitary and overcrowded parochial school. 
Our own children go to the public school. 
The immigrant children go to the parochial 
school. Our own children are taught by 
teachers carefully selected and trained for 
their service. In the overcrowded and in¬ 
sanitary parochial school the teaching is 
usually of a standard incomparably lower; 
often it is unworthy to be called education. 
Has the world ever presented a more 
curious and perplexing problem than we 
have here? We see American citizens of 
property and influence anxious to tax them¬ 
selves in order to present to the child of the 
Sicilian, Hungarian, or Polish peasant the 



72 


THE KEAN UNMASKED 


best common-school education in all the 
world. And then we see, to our unutterable 
amazement, this peasant serf, or city wast¬ 
rel, misled by his clergy, rejecting the only 
worthy means we have of making Americans 
out of his children. To an average American 
this whole situation is both perplexing and 
distressing. 

As regards the use of the Catholic vote in 
elections, the facts, while startling enough, 
are more easily understood. In 1917, to 
mention a single instance, all the country 
watched the Catholic church of New York 
City defeat one of its own distinguished 
members, Mr. Mitchell, for Mayor. No 
informed person longer seeks to deny the 
political influence of the Catholic church. 
Very recently Archbishop Hayes, of New 
York, personally directed the New York 
police to break up a public meeting called 
in the Town Hall by American citizens, 
The police appeared before the meeting 
began and actually went so far as to pre¬ 
vent its beginning. The law could not have 


IS THE KLAN ANTI-CATHOLIC? 


73 


been violated because no chance was given 
to violate the law. Archbishop Hayes 
simply decided that he would not permit 
this meeting, which had nothing whatever 
to do with any church or religious issue. 
So he ordered the doors of the building 
which had been hired for the purpose to be 
locked and the crowd driven away by the 
police. All we can say to our Catholic 
fellow citizens is just this: DO NO"]' 
FORCE US TO RESIST YOU. If you 
take direct control of the police power out 
of the hands of theduly constituted officers of 
government, then we, as Americans, must 
eventually resist your police power in de¬ 
fense of our liberty. Gifted with an infinite 
desire for peace and with great patience, we 
shall wait until we do not dare to wait longer. 
Meanwhile we plead with you daily: Do 
but accept the basic principles of our Amer¬ 
icanism and all arguments, all unpleasant¬ 
ness, will vanish in a single hour. 

In a democracy the separation of church 
and state implies much more than the 


74 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


abolition of state support of the church. 
Separation of church and state must mean 
with us that the individual citizen shall per¬ 
mit neither the state to interfere with his 
religious worship nor the church to interfere 
with his duties as a citizen. Only a develop¬ 
ed political mind can understand the nature 
of this very modern duality of attitude. 
The outward separation is, after all, largely 
a form of law. The inward separation, the 
state of mind, is the true source of the free¬ 
dom both of the church and the state. 
When the individual walks into his church 
he must enter with his body and his mind 
free to worship according to the dictates of 
his conscience. When he enters the voting- 
booth, when he enters the court-room, when 
he opens his mouth to mix his thoughts 
with his fellow citizens as regards things 
political, mind and mouth and hand must 
be free from the control of the church. 

To understand our problem fully we 
must never forget the platitude that our 
immigrant people are not Americans. They 


IS THE KLAN ANTI-CATHOLIC? 


75 


are Europeans. Immigrant Catholics are Eu¬ 
ropean Catholics. In almost every country 
of Continental Europe there is a Catholic 
party. The Catholic political party of 
Germany, of France, of Italy, of Belgium, 
ot Austria, or of Hungary, seeks to win the 
elections and control the government out¬ 
right. Again, to repeat myself, is there any¬ 
thing strange about the fact that when 
these immigrants form themselves into 
enormous foreign communities in our great 
cities or industrial districts they should act 
here just as they act in Europe? I do not 
think so. It is all simple enough. Its out¬ 
ward effects, at least, are as easily under¬ 
stood as a Mississippi hood or a San Fran¬ 
cisco earthquake. We must either put an 
end to this thing or this thing will put an 
end to our democracy. We can not have a 
Hungarian, a Polish, an Italian, or an Irish 
peasant Catholic party among us and still 
preserve the political system of our Amer¬ 
ican nation which has been created by three 
centuries of democratic evolution. A political 
system run by sectarian ecclesiastics and an 


76 


THE KEAN UNMASKED 


Anglo-Saxon bill of rights can not live on 
the same soil. In these things there can be 
no compromise. To surrender an inch is to 
surrender all and yield to the executioner. 

As regards this whole matter, our Amer¬ 
ican humility and false modesty has already 
worked us great harm. These matters 
must at last be dragged into the open and 
publicly discussed. Hence this exceedingly 
plain statement. If some of our citizens 
wish their children to attend parochial 
schools, then we want those parochial 
schools properly inspected. We would like 
to know what text-books are being used. 
The public ought to know just how much 
education, and what manner of education, 
the fourteen-year old immigrant boy or 
girl is possessed of when he leaves school. 
What does this boy or girl know about him¬ 
self? How much reading and writing and 
arithmetic has he laid hold of? What has 
he learned of American history and Amer¬ 
ican institutions? We Americans of all 
sections confess, not without shame, that 


IS THE KLAN ANTI-CATHOLIC? 


77 


we have not as yet done nearly enough for 
public education. But the means we have 
provided we wish to have used; the stand¬ 
ards we have set, none too high, we wish 
to have regarded; and what we are seeking 
to do for the immigrant we would like to 
have fully appreciated. 

We seek for all our more recent immigrant 
peoples such a blending with our people as 
shall find in religion and the church no 
hindrance to Americanism. We expect, 
that, more and more, we shall be united by 
the lasting bonds of a common patriotism, 
a common morality, and common social 
ideals. We crave the development among us 
of such a Catholic church as will not make 
intermarriage with those of other faiths im¬ 
possible or difficult. To throw such a chasm 
between our young people as is never 
bridged by the marriage tie would be a 
lasting curse to our country. Let us seek 
by every means to make all Christians ready 
for that more perfect unity of the entire 
Christian church which should ever be an 
ideal with all of us. 


78 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


The reader will find repeated again in this 
book, until it perhaps wearies him, a certain 
expression. This statement represents some¬ 
thing which I have made fundamental in all 
my thinking. We Americans must approach 
this and similar tasks in a spirit of the ut¬ 
most fellowship and gentleness. Our every 
act must partake of kindliness ind con¬ 
sideration. We expect to find, side by side 
with us in this matter, the American part 
of the Catholic church. Together we shall 
work out the problem and then forget it. 
This difficulty is, after all, but a passing 
phase of our complex social process. In a 
generation it will have been left behind us. 
The difficulties, even the tragedies, of one 
century often furnishes amusement to the 
historians of the next. So let us, in this 
thing, take thought of the morrow, too. 
May the execution of the policy we have 
declared be everywhere so inwrought with 
honorable motive and worthy purpose that 
presently none shall have the slightest 
cause to be against us or deny to us that 
fellowship and affection we seek to win 
from every American. 


CHAPTER VII 


The Terminology of The Klan 

D ILIGENT inquiries have been made 
into the peculiar terminology used by 
the Klan to designate its purposes and 
mission. Why is the word “Imperial” em¬ 
ployed to characterize the chief officers of 
the organization ? Why is the organization 
designated as an “Invisible Empire”? Does 
the Klan contemplate, perhaps, a nation¬ 
wide organization that at the height of its 
strength means revolution and the over¬ 
throw of our present republican form of 
government? These and other similiar 
questions—some intelligent, others less so— 
are being asked by both the enemies and 
the friends of the Klan. 

The words “Imperial”' and “Empire” 
find no friendly place in the vocabulary of 
a democracy. Whenever used they are con¬ 
nected with autocratic government and 
centralized power. These terms, as usually 



80 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


employed, are in sharp contrast to the 
principles of our great American democracy. 
We have everywhere and always held that 
imperialism is a despicable thing, a sur¬ 
vival of despotic power that came up from 
the caveman and was exercised always by 
force. Germany and Russia were the last great 
exponents in Europe of this imperialistic idea 
of forcible conquest. Nothing has been more 
revolting in America than the suggestion 
of centralized power by which a nation was 
to be governed and directed. Even the 
temporary expedient of taking the Philippine 
Islands into our keeping, as a necessary 
sequence to the war with Spain, and hold¬ 
ing them under military rule until the people 
could be developed into approximate de¬ 
mocracy and govern themselves, found stren¬ 
uous opponents. During all the twenty 
years that we have maintained the man¬ 
date, it has caused dissatisfaction among 
the nations. 

We of the South know only too well what 
the reign of the bayonet means. The 





The Imperial Symbol of the Klan 












THE TERMINOLOGY OF THE KLAN 


81 


tragedy of American history was the un¬ 
timely death of Lincoln. Had he lived the 
story of the Reconstruction would have been 
different, very different. Following the 
“deep damnation of his taking off,” the 
white race of the South was subjected to the 
supremest test to which Anglo-Saxon worth 
was ever put in the history of the world. 
The test did not result from the defeat of 
the Confederacy, or in the devastation of the 
states over which the armies fought, or in 
the appalling loss of life during the four 
sanguinary years. It was in the Recon¬ 
struction period, when the armed forces of 
the victorious North occupied the entire 
Southland and secured to the Negro a 
lordship over Anglo-Saxon democracy, re¬ 
finement and civilization. The mute an¬ 
guish of those years can not be put into any 
form of speech. But let me speak no word of 
blame. My people of the South hate every 
form of coercive government as they love the 
freedom of our great democracy. There is 
to us one symbol expressing the deepest 
loyalty of the Klan, elevated even above the 


82 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


Fiery Cross. It is the American flag. To the 
Klan it is the emblem of human liberty and 
security, guaranteed to every citizen of the 
land and signalled to all the world beyond our 
borders. So jealous is the Klan of the Amer¬ 
ican flag that it is unwilling to share its 
place with the flag of any other nation. 
We are unwilling even that the colors of 
the nations to whom we are bound by ties 
of both blood and gratitude shall in this 
country mingle their colors with the Amer¬ 
ican flag. We desire no confusion in the 
minds of American people as they look up¬ 
on the emblematic flags of different nations 
as to that place of supremacy in our loyal 
devotion which we hold for the American 
flag alone. 

But at the same time the Klan renounces 
no obligations or responsibilities to the 
rest of the world. We believe that the world 
is moving toward “That one far-off divine 
event,” “the Parliament of man, the 
Federation of the world,” but even when this 
greater fraternalism of the world is con- 


THE TERMINOLOGY OF THE KLAN 


83 


summated, we should not be willing for 
our colors to be commingled with those of 
other nations. The emblem that symbolizes 
our sacrifices and our victories, our failures 
and our triumphs, and out of which our 
common democracy has come, must have in 
our hearts no lesser place, or even an equal 
place, with those of other nations. With us 
the place of our flag is not below, or along¬ 
side, the flags of other peoples. It must be 
kept apart and above. 

We are ready to interpose our will and 
our strength to prevent the strong from 
oppressing the weak anywhere. We are 
ready out of our abundance to distribute 
charity to the unfortunate to the uttermost 
ends of the earth, without respect to race, 
color or clime. We are quite prepared to 
promote a great democratic evangelism to 
the oppressed and downtrodden peoples of 
all the earth, that they too may become 
conscious, through democracy, of human 
worth, and achieve something of the free- 


84 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


dom which we enjoy. Yet everywhere we 
shall serve under our own colors. All the 
nations of the earth shall continue their 
separate existence and work out their 
destiny under the emblems into which have 
been spun and woven the distinctive 
characteristics of their race and their coun¬ 
try. All this has been relentlessly brought 
home to us through the resurgence of the 
nations during and after the Great War. 
Nothing but absolute independence would 
satisfy the Poles. Ireland must be free or 
perish in revolutionary effort. The smaller 
the people, the greater its effort to prove its 
right to national independence, its capacity 
for a separate government. With these 
facts in mind it would seem superfluous for 
native-born Americans to explain or defend 
our spirit of patriotism and nationalism. 

The phase “Invisible Empire” means 
that the Ku Klux Klan undertakes to es¬ 
tablish and maintain a nation-wide organ¬ 
ization in the thought of our people. It 
plans a conquest only in the realm of the 


THE TERMINOLOGY OF THE KLAN 


85 


invisible where men do their thinking. The 
mentality of the American people is to be 
awakened, stimulated, and directed. It 
means the sovereignty of Americanism, of 
the democratic idea, in every American 
mind. We plan no system of coercion or 
outside pressure by which the American 
people are to be forced into this “Invisible 
Empire.” I may modestly, and not ir¬ 
reverently, say that the idea underlying the 
establishment of the Klan and its principles 
in America was taken from one of the lead¬ 
ers in the early Christian Church, who said 
that the propagation of Christianity was 
without force, noise, or violence, without 
army or treasury, but that the Great Lead¬ 
er had established an everlasting kingdom 
by taking captive the thoughts of men. So 
the Klan holds that anything constructed 
by force may be destroyed by a superior 
force. Anything impressed upon unwilling 
subjects by outside effort may be rejected 
and thrown off in the springtime of returning 
power. Anything and everything that is 
established by such exercise of force is 


86 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


marked and destined for decay and re¬ 
turn to the dust. But that which is once 
established in the deeper thought, from the 
spiritual need, of mankind is indestructible 
because there is no manner of force that can 
lay hold of it. Alexander said, “Philip, my 
father, gave me life, but Aristotle taught 
me to think.” It is not the blood of Philip, 
through Alexander, that pulses in the arter¬ 
ies of the world’s civilization of to-day; 
but it is rather the thought of Aristotle, 
which, despite all the Alexanders of history, 
runs through the story of the world’s civil¬ 
ization in all the lands and all the centuries. 
It is the idea possessing the spirit which 
vitalizes all our basic institutions and 
movements toward human freedom which 
animate the noblest endeavors of human 
life. It is in the thought of the American 
people that the Ku Klux Klan undertakes 
to establish its “Invisible Empire,” mighty 
in its ultimate consummations, indestructi¬ 
ble and glorious forever. 


CHAPTER VIII 


Symbolism of The Klan 

M UCH ado has been made about the 
strange symbolism of the Klan. I 
stated at the beginning that the regalia 
now in use by the organization, like the 
terminology, was selected as a memorial 
to the original Ku Klux Klan. It has been 
generally regarded as grotesque and ghostly, 
designed to intimidate and terrify persons 
against whom the displeasure of the Klan 
might be directed. But the only purpose in 
adopting the white robes and incidental 
trimmings was to keep in grateful remem¬ 
brance the intrepid men who preserved 
Anglo-Saxon supremacy in the South dur¬ 
ing the perilous period of Reconstruction. 

The regalia of the Klan, however, express¬ 
es something more in the present organ¬ 
ization than a mere memorial. Its symbols 
convey to the initiated the highest sense of 
patriotism, chivalry and fraternalism. These 


88 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


symbols were designed by myself during 
the years that I pondered a revival of the old 
order, and contemplated the endangered posi¬ 
tion of the native-born American through¬ 
out our commonwealth. Every line, every 
angle, every emblem spells out to a Klans- 
man his duty, honor, responsibility and 
obligation to his fellow men and to civili¬ 
zation. None of it was wrought for mere 
ornamentation, and none of it design¬ 
ed as mere mysticism. All of it was woven 
into the white robes of the Ku Klux Klan 
for the purpose of teaching by symbolism 
the very best things in our national life. 

Emblematic robes are not uncommon to 
organizations of men banded together for 
either religious or fraternal purposes. My 
affiliations with the church and my con¬ 
nection with a number of fraternal orders 
have convinced me that the impelling truths 
which grapple and hold the loyalties and 
convictions of men are taught better by 
symbolism than ritualism. The Roman 
Catholic church proclaims the authority of 


SYMBOLISM OF THE KLAN 


89 


its mission to the world through the in¬ 
signia of its clergy and its rulers; while its 
service of sacrifice and sanctity, of sep¬ 
aration and consecration, is expressed in 
the robes of its nuns and its celebrants. In 
that colossal pile, St. Peter’s at Rome, the 
most splendid edifice of Christianity in all 
the world, is to be found a vast collection of 
stones and gold, an array of art so magnif¬ 
icent that it dazzles even the imagination, 
an amazing accumulation of trophies torn 
by conquest from pagan temples—all sym¬ 
bolizing the universal dominion of the church 
not only over all things material but also 
over all things religious. The robes of the 
cathedral are elaborate and impressive 
throughout all the grades and ranks of serv¬ 
ice, from the drab garb of the keeper of the 
portals to the flashing parti-colored uniforms 
of the Swiss guard, and on through the white ? 
red, and black trappings of the attendants 
in the inner courts to the vivid scarlet of 
the cardinals and the gorgeous purple of 
the pope. All are designed to express some 



90 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


function, or mission, or doctrine of the 
church in its vast system of evangelism. 

The Anglican church of Great Britain 
and the Protestant Episcopal church of 
America, as well as various other Protestant 
organizations have found it to be impressive 
and inspiring for the clergy and the sister¬ 
hood to wear robes designed to mark them 
as men and women set apart for service to 
humanity. Perhaps the Greek Catholic 
Church has the most elaborate system of 
teaching great religious truths by symbol¬ 
ism of any other religious organization. It 
undertakes to convey to the world the idea 
of its virility as a Christian organization by 
an extensive and artistically wrought out 
symbolism in its robes and insignia. 

It goes without saying that nearly all, or 
perhaps all, of the great fraternal organiza¬ 
tions of the world are characterized by the 
robes they wear. There are different robes 
of different orders and various robes for the 
same order in different degrees. These 


SYMBOLISM OF THE KLAN 


91 


carry the message of fraternalism in the 
garments that are worn. Why should we, 
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, be singled out 
and condemned for adopting a symbolism 
altogether unique, to represent our partic¬ 
ular service to the age in which we live? 

Some objections, probably not wholly mis¬ 
directed, have been made to the mask that 
is worn by the Klan in public parades and 
demonstrations. The objections would 
have all the more force if it were true that 
the membership of the Klan were concealed 
from pubiic scrutiny; but this is not true. 
Every local Klan has the custody of its 
roster and the roster may be given to the 
public at the option of the local Klan. 
Besides, it is overlooked that the Ku Klux 
Klan is a chartered organization—in fact 
twice chartered under the laws of Georgia. 

Its membership is subject to the scrutiny 
of the State at its will. In addition to all this, 
the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan in respect¬ 
ive communities are well-known, responsi- 


92 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


ble and representative men, and their con¬ 
nection with the Klan is generally known 
to the community at large. So influential 
and conspicuous are those men that their 
leadership is a guarantee of the worthy and 
orderly purposes of the Klan. However, 
the matter of removing the mask from the 
Klan whenever it appears in public is under 
consideration, and it is not improbable 
that the Klan will be authorized to remove 
the mask whenever a public demonstration 
is given. 

Outrages and atrocities, expressing va¬ 
rious forms of prejudice and hate, have 
broken out in some parts of the country 
during the past twelve months. Often they 
have been charged to the Ku Klux Klan. 
It is the same old story repeating itself. 
During Reconstruction days crimes were 
perpetrated by men wearing regalia similar 
to that of the Ku Klux Klan. The govern¬ 
ment spent much time and money investi¬ 
gating these crimes, and compiled alto¬ 
gether forty-six volumes in reports, but 


SYMBOLISM OF THE KLAN 


93 


wherever the perpetrators of an outrage 
against order and decency were uncovered, 
they were found to be not Klansmen but 
Scalawags and Carpet-Baggers who had 
used regalia like that of the Klan under 
which they might enact their dual purpose 
of committing a crime and blackening the 
reputation of the Klan. At the recent in¬ 
vestigation in Washington numerous crimes 
were charged to the present-day order of the 
Ku Klux. These had been heralded in 
startling stories by the press throughout the 
land. I vigorously denied that a single 
crime had ever been committed by the 
authority of the Knights of the Ku Klux 
Klan. I repeat that it is not an order 
that can tolerate or condone disorder, 
violence or lawlessness. It pledges itself 
now and always, here and everywhere, to 
the protection of society under constituted 
authority. It holds itself in readiness to 
serve the best interests of society, not de¬ 
spite the law, but always under the law and 
through the law. 


94 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


Symbolism teaches the great principles 
of life, and being, and destiny, better than 
any form of speech. There is in human 
nature an element of mysticism that re¬ 
sponds to suggestion and intimation when 
no logic or philosophy could reach it. The 
mightiest movements in our human nature, 
those which transform the character and 
transfigure the spirit, have their seat in a 
realm deeper than where man does his think¬ 
ing or even his willing. It is in that part of 
human nature where the loyalties and 
affections, the prejudices and the passions 
are kept, and it is only the mystical, the 
mysterious, the intangible that can reach 
these forces in human nature, arouse them, 
and put them into action. It is poetry and 
art and music that move and stir the best 
that is in us and make us conscious of what 
we may do and be. It is not strange then that 
symbolism has been used by the church in 
order to stimulate reverence and devotion; 
that it has been used by lodges to awaken 
fraternalism and humanism; and that it has 
been used by every great patriotic organ- 


SYMBOLISM OF THE KLAN 


95 


ization to arouse passion for native land 
and freedom. Indeed, every cause that has 
ever lived and flourished in the world, 
whether religious, fraternal, or patriotic, 
has been highly spiritualized and all the 
fiery forces of the inner man have been 
elicited and organized in its service. There 
must be in every real movement something 
of the fervor of the Crusaders. Without 
this every spiritual effort of man, whether 
great or small, has had its ardor grow cold 
and the bright light of its enthusiasm go 
out in darkness. 

What, indeed, could be more appealing 
to the finer things in human nature than 
the fiery cross? “By that symbol we con¬ 
quer.” It carries the idea of illumination 
and sacrifice. It symbolizes a love that lights 
the way to the noblest service; it symbol¬ 
izes a service that is impelled by a burning 
love. Here lies the only way forward. The 
world's amelioration is proclaimed by the 
glowing cross. We sometimes think of the 
cross as remote, as belonging to the past, as 


96 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


an insolated event. The cross is now and here, 
and it is an essential part in the advance¬ 
ment of the world’s civilization. It means, 
in the highest sense, freedom—the freedom 
of all mankind. But there is no emancipa¬ 
tion in all the world that comes as a gratuity. 
Wherever human life is freed a ransom 
price must be paid. When it comes to the 
liberation of human thought and the break¬ 
ing of chains from immortal souls, there 
is no ransom that will pay the price except 
that into which men mint their lives, and 
out of which they coin their higher selves. 
All this and more the fiery cross of the Ku 
Klux Klan conveys to the Klansman. It 
means the supreme agony of love through 
the sacrifice of life, to the end that freedom 
and democracy may be secured to all man¬ 
kind forever. 







' v ■ M 














\ 










Stone Mountain—The Klan Rendezvous 








/7 


CHAPTER EX 

The Rendezvous 

/C^\ ^9 r > t o ex act ^rL^-ht^^y h 

day bn&ko k thefKIa rTfrom all over the 


court£y 
tain. IVft 


;e ta 


tbun- 


rom every"walk ancTstation in 
life leave their daily pursuits and journey to 
the Klonvocation. They come from the 
pulpit, the schoolroom, the market, the 
bank, the mine, the factory, the shop, the 
farm, and from high offices of public trust 
and authority, and meet at this unique ren¬ 
dezvous. Stone Mountain is sixteen miles 
south of Atlanta. The place of assembly 
is not without interest. It is a huge boulder 
compacted into solid granite and thrown up, 
ages ago, by some terrific convulsion. The 
stone is three miles in circumference and 
something more than a mile in altitude by 
the trail leading to its summit. Its frowning 
and forbidding front is scant of foliage. 
Soil which the winds have brought and de¬ 
posited in its crevices and on its craggy sides 







98 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


has no deepness. Adventurous shrubs and 
trees that have sprung up from time to 
time have been beaten back by sun and 
storm because they had no anchorage in 
the earth. To this mountain boulder of 
solid granite the Klan resorts for comrade¬ 
ship and consecration. The pilgrimage is not 
unlike that conj ectured by a noble and worthy 
order which takes its initiates to the far 
East, travels them through the unmarked 
desert, over blistering sands, and under a 
sky of brass, while the breath of the winds 
is like that of a furnace, scorching the weary 
pilgrims as step by step they fight on to the 
Mecca. The Klansmen make their way 
along the poorly defined and jagged 
trail of Stone Mountain, climbing upward, 
always upward, every step taken requiring a 
step higher, until, among the elderly mem¬ 
bers, the last ounce of fortitude and endur¬ 
ance is expended in the ascent to the top. 
There on the bald crest, far above the in 
sistent clamor and demands of daily life 
men are alone with each other and in the 
presence of the infinite. ItTias sometimes 


THE RENDEZVOUS 


99 


seemed to us to be a place where two 
eternities met, the past giving its solemn 
command to the men so isolated and ele¬ 
vated, and the future beckoning them on to 
still further achievement. First, there comes 
a sense of tranquillity. The men look out 
upon the peace and harmony of the stars 
and seem to feel in their souls something of 
the strength and orderliness of the planets 
in their courses. Then comes, during our 
preliminary ceremonies, a moment of mar¬ 
velous moral tension and exhilaration. The 
vast throng, with upturned faces, deeply 
moved to eloquent agony of speechless 
prayer, catches a glorious inspiration. It 
comes upon the multitude as a wind mov¬ 
ing gently through the forests in the autumn 
time. Every soul is thrilled. In this con¬ 
scious moment each man feels as if he were 
in a holy temple consecrating all that he is 
and all that he has to a great cause. In re¬ 
sponse to his dedication, new and secret 
divine forces begin to stir in his conscious¬ 
ness. I have looked upon the whole as¬ 
sembly of strong men, a few of whom had 


100 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


jeopardized life unto death on the fields of 
war in the Sixties, and a larger number of 
younger men who had just carried them¬ 
selves like demigods in the fierce fighting in 
France, and I have seen the tears rush un¬ 
bidden from their eyes and trickle down 
their cheeks, while here and there a sob that 
could not be controlled shook the frame of 
a man unafraid of either life or death. It is 
the time and place where all pettiness and 
meanness is submerged and washed out by 
the great surge of the profoundest sense of 
human worth. It is a moment in which all 
hates and animosities and 'prejudices die 
and in which love and sacrifice and altruism 
are reborn. It is a time in which all that 
is coarse and unchaste and unrefined in human 
life is consumed by a holy passion, and all 
that is noble and courteous and divine is 
made regnant. 

In the execution of such ceremonies, the 
Klan evidences its practical nature and its 
concrete knowledge. Americans can not be 
aroused by the mere citation of facts. Our 


THE RENDEZVOUS 


10 ! 


minds are stuffed unto bursting with facts. 
We want action. And we do not propose to 
wait a generation as has been so often the 
case, and then weep because it is too late to 
act. We seek to draw the souls of men irito 
a service which means sacrifice. This serv¬ 
ice is vital to the nation, and essential to 

the salvation of our civilization. The lan- 

\ 

guageof symbolism is the language of the soul. 

The Klan disperses, goes back to mingle 
with men, to meet all the stresses and the 
exigencies of life. But in each man there is 
a light that never before fell on sea or shore, 
that will lie upon the task that he is set to 
do, and, however hard and menial it may be, 
will transform that work into a beatitude. 
More than this: We have daily evidence 
that this light, in honor, kindness and 
charity, falls upon our fellow men along the 
pathway that they and we walk together. 
Surely there can be no hidden dangers in the 
assembling of men under such conditions, 
impelled by such motives, capable of such 
inspiration. 


102 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


If we undertake to build or maintain a 
civilization in which the moral and social 
idealisms of men are not mixed with the 
mortar in the structure, we shall most 
surely build for decline and decay. But if 
Americanism becomes a holy cause in which 
the souls of men are enlisted, in which serv¬ 
ice of our country and our country's serv¬ 
ice of the world is made first and foremost, 
then we shall build an empire indestruc¬ 
tible; because, mingled with the cruder 
material there will be the elements that are 
everlasting. In such workmanship alone 
can there be security for those American 
institutions which we seek to save by the 
consecration of all we have and all we are. 


CHAPTER X 


Democracy as a Social System 
is on Trial 

I N a preceding chapter I stated that we 
Americans are barely reproducing our 
numbers on our own soil. In comparison 
with the colored and foreign elements our 
percentage is every year being reduced. In 
full view, within a few decades at most, lies 
the new America. Perhaps it has been fear 
of giving offense to others, more likely it 
has been pure carelessness and individual 
selfishness on our part, which has prevented 
us from discussing our country of to-mor¬ 
row. The new America, if the present 
tendencies continue, will be a nation com¬ 
posed of a majority of American white 
farmers only in the middle western and 
plains states. Black farmers will ultimately 
predominate throughout the coastal regions 
of the South and the Mississippi Delta, and 
Japanese farmers will rapidly multiply their 
numbers on the Pacific coast. But the ever- 


104 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


increasing city population already numbers 
over half the nation. This city population 
in the North and East contains to-day 
about fifteen per cent, of original Americans. 
Presently this diminishing element will 
count only a few capitalists and professional 
persons. The majority of the business 
class, even, will be composed of Greeks, 
Jews, Germans, Italians and their descend¬ 
ants. The great working class of the cities 
is even now composed of two elements. 
First, there are the skilled workers, mainly 
British, Irish, Germans, and Scandina¬ 
vians, with their immediate descendants. 
The unskilled working people of the cities, 
always tending to submerge the skilled, are 
composed of Italians, Negroes, Slavs, Jews, 
French-Canadians, and thirty-odd other 
elements from the south and east of Europe 
and from Asia. Recently seventy-two Ameri¬ 
cans, members of a literary club, in a small 
industrial town in New York, took a census 
of their children. They discovered, much 
to their surprise that altogether they were 
rearing exactly fourteen offspring. Mean- 


DEMOCRACY ON TRIAL 


105 


while fourteen children is not an uncom¬ 
mon number at all for an Italian or French- 
Canadian couple to add to the citizenship 
of our country. 

j 

Questions arise here which it is quite 
necessary for us to answer at once. Why, in¬ 
deed, do we Americans lay such great store 
by our peculiar racial heritage? Are not our 
recent immigrants, taken as a whole, as 
“good” as we? If we do not desire to bring 
children into the world, should not our 
country be left to others who are willing 
to undertake the responsibilities of parent¬ 
hood? Hence, why are we not disposed to 
accept our dissolution silently and go to 
the grave with a smile? 

The answer to these questions is implied 
in the title of this article. It is the cherished 
belief of the members of the Knights of 
the Ku Klux Klan that democracy—democ¬ 
racy in all its aspects, the social spirit of 
democracy, the practice of democracy, the 
regeneration of the soul of mankind through 



106 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


democracy—that this is the greatest of all 
values created by modern civilization. We 
hold further that the part played by the 
American people in the evolution of democ¬ 
racy has been of primary importance. 
Despite all our mistakes, and they have 
been many, we have succeeded. And our 
success, even with its limitations, has been, 
we fully believe, as a light and as a leading 
to all the world. It was our glorious priv¬ 
ilege to unlock the prison door of France 
when our sister republic was first created in 
the French Revolution. It was largely the 
success of universal, white, male suffrage 
in America which impelled our brethren of 
the British Empire to undertake the same 
colossal experiment. No doubt our history 
has been the subject of far too much 
fervid eloquence and vain boasting. We 
have not often hesitated to tell all the world 
about ourselves. Here I am seeking merely 
to state the simple facts, because without 
them the standpoint and argument of the 
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan could not be 
understood. 



DEMOCRACY ON TRIAL 


107 


Among the most false of theories which 
sane minds ever gave themselves over to 
believing, has been that which claims that 
the democratic system, if only put on trial, 
will work among any people at any time. 
Indeed, many persons otherwise well in¬ 
formed still accept this folly. They believe 
that democracy is a sort of “universal 
truth/' All that we must do is to preach it 
to all mankind as a sort of saving gospel. 
All the heathen need do is to accept it, 
believe it, and forthwith practice it. Oh, 
vanity of vanities! It has been three hun¬ 
dred years since the English Bill of Rights 
was signed by King James First and nearly 
one hundred and fifty years since our Amer¬ 
ican Declaration of Independence. And now 
the Great War has ended with our seeking 
to ram democracy down the throats of 
nations which do not want it. What blows 
in the face our optimism receives from the 
simplest facts of history! One hundred and 
thirty years ago the French revolutionists 
attempted to pull down every throne in 
Europe and plant democracy in every land. 


108 


THE KEAN UNMASKED 


And then only seven years ago the hosts of 
the Kaiser made their plunge toward Paris 
in order to destroy the French Republic 
and establish absolutism and kultur in its 
place. 

No! The practice of democracy does not 
spread around the world as rapidly as we 
can tell people how nice it is and how much 
we like it ourselves. Democracy has been a 
slow, delicate and perishable growth among 
a specific group of Europeans. These peoples 
have been much favored through a peculiar 
heritage. No doubt, ages ago, it took the 
ancestors of man a long, long time to stand 
upright. Some quadrupeds seem to have 
tried but never could learn the new method, 
so they still amble along half the time on 
all fours. So to-day it seems to take a con¬ 
siderable period for the masses to learn how 
to rule themselves successfully. Yet we 
ought not to be utterly discouraged. If the 
facts indicate that some peoples can never 
learn, that is no reason at all why we should 
surrender our own learning and growth in 


DEMOCRACY ON TRIAL 


109 


order to be equal again with the weaker 
brethren. 

Democracy is on trial. It is on trial in 
America just as much as anywhere else. It 
is being weighed and revalued before the 
whole world. We have seen many a 
European people after being overurged to ac¬ 
cept a republican form of government, again 
returning to autocracy. The Greek ma¬ 
jority which recently voted to bring back 
the Kaiser s ally, King Constantine, and the 
Kaiser’s sister, the Queen, was rather stag¬ 
gering in its size. If a vast majority of the 
Greeks in their home country joyously 
accept monarchy and Hohenzollernism, how 
can we expect our Greek immigrants here in 
the United States to enthuse over our re¬ 
publican institutions? They come, like 
others, as everybody knows, to avail them¬ 
selves of the opportunity to advance their 
material interests. This has been true 
with the majority of our immigrants for 
over fifty years. Who, indeed, can blame 
them for taking advantage of economic con- 


110 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


ditions in America? Indeed, these im¬ 
migrants of every sort and kind are well 
within their rights. If some of them seem 
to make too much money out of us, is it 
not because some of our employing class 
first urged their coming in order to make 
money out of them? We brought them in 
because we thought they would be cheap 
and profitable to us. Some of them have 
proved in the long run to be very dear and 
unprofitable. 

Let me here make a general observation 
regarding the attitude of my colleagues and 
myself in connection with this whole matter 
of immigration. Where, in these chapters, 
mention is made of any particular race or 
group of immigrants, not the slightest 
offense is intended. But too often our 
squeamish fear of giving offense to the over¬ 
sensitive has prevented our discussing this 
most crucial of our national problems. 
Everyone feels free to-day to discuss Russia, 
to investigate Russia, to come to conclu¬ 
sions with reference to what is being done in 


DEMOCRACY ON TRIAL 


111 


Russia, and to make suggestions as to a 
Russian policy. Why, then, we ask in the 
name of all common sense, should it be an 
offense to anyone to discuss the millions of 
Russians who live in the United States? 
How do they make a living, and what is their 
percentage of national increase? Are they 
or are they not desirable immigrants? The 
same holds good of the Germans, the Irish, 
and of every other racial element which is 
increasing among us. All this is interesting 
to us and greatly important. It is interest¬ 
ing and important in more ways than one- 
What the immigrants may and should 
demand, what the Negro or the Japanese 
are quite right in demanding of us, is that 
we as native-born, white Americans should 
discuss these questions of population in a 
way that is at once honorable and kindly. 
We must stick to the facts. We may in¬ 
dulge neither in slander nor in base insinua¬ 
tion. Those of our immigrant population who 
have been received into citizenship may 
ask especial consideration. We, of the 
Klan, on our part propose to bring facts in 


112 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


support of a policy. There may be those 
who wish to disagree with us publicly. If 
so, we shall expect to be asked to consider 
only facts brought in rebuttal. As man to 
man, marshalling fact for fact, let us sit 
down together and seek to sift this matter 
to the bottom. 









I he Emperor Addressing First Imperial Klonvokation. 






CHAPTER XI 

Our Cities a Menace to Democracy 

R eferring again to the menace of 

the American city to American in¬ 
stitutions, I desire to remind the reader of 
the thought of some of our most profound 
thinkers on the great problems of de¬ 
mocracy. Some of these views expressed at 
different periods of our history were pro¬ 
phetic, and some of them were conclusions, 
as though the visions of the seers were being 
fulfilled. In the early days of the republic 
when there were no great cities in our 
country and when the tide of immigration 
had just begun to flow to our shores and 
settle in the growing centers along the 
Atlantic seaboard, Mr. Jefferson said, “The 
American city is a cancer on the body 
politic.” He seemed to foresee, at the very 
beginning of the republic, the deadly poison 
of anti-democracy generated among the 
alien people congested in our cities. In 
1866 Wendell Phillips, a powerful advocate 


114 


THF, KLAN UNMASKED 


of emancipation, said, after the great con¬ 
flict was ended and the Negroes free, “The 
time is coming when the American city will 
strain the government as slavery never did.” 
He, too, foresaw the virus which the city 
would spread to the entire nation, attack¬ 
ing and consuming the great principles of 
democracy upon which the republic was 
founded. In recent years, Lord Bryce, 
Ambassador of Great Britain to the United 
States, after years of study and careful in¬ 
vestigation, wrote that classic entitled “The 
American Commonwealth.” In this work 
there was much commendation of Ameri¬ 
can institutions, but the book was not without 
candid criticism. He said that “the conspic¬ 
uous failure of American democracy is in 
its great cities.” The clear meaning of the 
eminent Englishman was that the Amer¬ 
ican people remained really democratic only 
in the rural sections and the villages. Al¬ 
ready conglomerate population from every 
clime and shore had destroyed democracy 
in our congested centers. Only recently 
Mr. H. G. Wells, one of the most conspic- 


OUR CITIES A MENACE TO DEMOCRACY 115 


uous, progressive thinkers in the world, 
looked upon New York with its seething 
millions, heard its Babel of languages, felt 
its delirious fever, and then calmly an¬ 
nounced that Petrograd in its rust and deso¬ 
lation was a picture of New York in the 
future. In our greatest city, this profound 
student of social and political life saw un¬ 
mistakable evidence of the real and seeth¬ 
ing madness of Bolshevism which meant the 
overthrow and the utter collapse of all things 
democratic. 

We are told to-day (1920) that millions 
of workers in our great cities are unem¬ 
ployed. I reflect at once upon the figures 
which are placed before us. In round num¬ 
bers we have, this winter, about six millions 
of unnaturalized foreign working people 
living in our cities, and almost exactly the 
same number of employed on our hands. What 
would they have us do? Are six millions 
more to come to us and thus give us a total 
of twelve millions of unemployed? What 
would these people all do for a living? There 


116 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


are simply not enough jobs in the cities 
for them, and it seems evident that there 
will not be in our generation. It is these 
masses, which, by sheer force of number, 
gave us the present insoluble problem of 
the city. Our cities can maintain their 
large populations only if the country pop¬ 
ulation is increased to supply them food and 
raw materials on the one hand, and with 
markets on the other. 

Overgrown cities are in themselves a 
menace. When the surplus is composed 
of unassimilated and unemployed aliens 
the menace is doubled,—nay, it is multipli¬ 
ed tenfold. The great city as at present con¬ 
structed and conducted corrodes the very 
soul of our American life. Factory work, 
with every new invention of automatic 
machinery, progressively selects those who 
are more and more unfit to be Americans. 
A factory manager in Chicago recently 
amended a new rule for the selection of 
employees. He would hire no blondes. The 
big blonde people, he said, “would not stay 



OUR CITIES A MENACE TO DEMOCRACY 117 


at their machines until the whistle blew.” 
He was evidently hunting for a people who 
could be trained never to move a foot, or an 
eye, for ten hours a day. The growth of an 
American is ordinarily impossible under the 
conditions of either great wealth or great 
poverty. The city simply can not furnish 
the character-building elements which must 
needs go into the making of an American. 
Every American child should be born to a 
vast heritage. This heritage should in¬ 
clude a fine healthy parentage, clean birth, 
gentle care, proper nourishment and op¬ 
portunity for play and education in the 
open country. 

Is there no cause for the Knights of the 
Ku Klux Klan among the robust, native- 
born folk of the countryside? Is not the 
menace of the city to our ideals and in¬ 
stitutions an urgent demand for the or¬ 
ganization of our unspoiled rural life to save 
the nation from infection by the great 
cities? 


118 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


It may be that we are too late in starting 
this movement of ‘‘America for Americans 
and Americans for America.” No doubt it 
should have been begun thirty years ago. 
But if we can find some method by which, 
after ten years of entire rejection, immi¬ 
gration can be narrowly and rigidly restrict¬ 
ed, and by which the surplus population 
can be distributed over the vast, unculti¬ 
vated area of our great country, and slowly 
wrought into our social life, there is yet a 
hope left for our country. But if alien 
populations are permitted, as in the past, to 
flood our land, colonize in our great cities, 
and propagate their kind with such amaz¬ 
ing rapidity, while only native-born Ameri¬ 
cans continue to till the soil and propagate 
their kind in an appallingly decreasing ratio, 
then our country is lost and everything the 
fathers strove to build for posterity will 
sooner or later be wiped out. We do not 
in the least seek to hide the fact that the 
Ku Klux Klan is making a last stand for 
America as the home of Americans and 
Americanism. 


CHAPTER XII 


The Failure of Democracy in Central 
and Eastern Europe 

T O the average country-born American 
the period of the war has been a time 
of painful disillusionment. There may have 
been among us some who, before the war, 
had some accurate knowledge of what was 
going on in the world; but the great mass 
of Americans were very much shocked by 
the succeeding event. We took the state¬ 
ments of the leaders of the people in 
Germany and Russia at their face value. 
It seems to me to be very much worth while, 
at present, to trace the various events by 
which we were led into knowing what 
central and eastern Europe were really 
thinking and doing. Let us recall our first 
period of disappointment. We had always 
believed that the parties of the people in 
Germany, especially the great social-dem¬ 
ocratic party, had the power to prevent the 
Kaiser from undertaking a war of conquest. 


120 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


The declaration of war was to be the signal 
for a revolution and the creation of a re¬ 
public. This was rather taken for granted, 
without investigation, by reading people 
all over the world. When we saw the entire 
German nation, with hardly an exception, 
turn quite insane with the war spirit, we 
sat back and wondered what this people 
was really like. 

It was also a generally accepted theory 
among us that the German immigrants who 
came to us had left Germany because they 
disliked the tyranny of its government. 
Then, in 1914, with a suddenness that 
quite took our breath away, came the propa¬ 
ganda of “Kultur.” The entire German 
nation, through every means it had of 
speaking to the outside world, informed us 
blandly that it possessed a system of society 
infinitely more efficient and desirable than 
democracy. “It is Germany’s duty under 
God,” wrote Bernhardi,“to give her superior 
culture (Kultur) to all inferior peoples.” 
Indeed, the war itself was generally inter- 


FAILURE OF DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE 


121 


preted by Germans as an act of charity and 
self-sacrifice upon their part. At the time 
the idea was so new to us that it took us 
just three years to really comprehend what 
was going on in Europe. Even President 
Wilson, in 1916, declared publicly that we 
did not know the real causes of the War. 

We may or may not have completely 
destroyed the Germany autocracy; but we 
may be sure we have by no means done 
with the system of Kultur. It is all too 
easily put into practice. The stupendous 
machinery and organizations of modern 
industry presents a perfect maze of social 
problems for solution. Kultur is, by far, 
the easiest way out. The direction of the 
whole business of life is simply turned over 
to a “great man” or to a small clique. People 
everywhere are naturally lazy and morally 
irresponsible. For the thinking and charac¬ 
terful minority there come times of mental 
anguish and disillusionment. To-day the 
times tempt us to despair. We are almost 
driven to lose faith in the majority and so 


122 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


in government by the majority. “Why not 
try a change,” “it could not be worse;” 
we hear it said on every hand. So, perhaps, 
we in America may yet try Kultur. Certain¬ 
ly we shall if we again have unrestricted 
immigration. When democracy fails, some 
form of monarchy will be our only salvation 
from oligarchy; and an oligarchy is more 
dangerous to freedom than monarchy. 
A monarchy, with our peculiar industrial 
development and our great propertyless 
masses, means Kultur. 

In the midst of the Great War came the 
Russian revolution. We sat back and said, 
“How fine! Now they are going to follow 
our example by building a great Russian 
Republic, which will soon break down the 
German autocracy.” Even now most of us 
do not begin to understand what has really 
happened. What we do know is that the 
Bolshevists have not only created a state 
of universal starvation, disease, and despair 
throughout Russia, but they have also 
tried to spread their system throughout 


FAILURE OF DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE 


123 


Europe and the world. To this end they 
have made foreign war and conducted an 
enormous and costly world propaganda. As 
I write we learn that, while we were voting 
credits and collecting funds for the starving 
in Russia, they were paying $30,000 to a 
single agent to execute a single murderous 
bomb-plot in New York City. 

In our last chapter we quoted Mr. H. 
G. Wells’s statement that New York City 
will be the next Petrograd. This observation 
can be, by no means, taken jocularly. Go 
in our present course, and Bolshevism will 
be, in all our larger cities and industrial dis¬ 
tricts, the natural alternative for monarchy. 
Compelled to choose between the two, our 
original American people will probably 
divide and civil war will result. Lenine and 
Trotsky did not create Bolshevism. Bolshe¬ 
vism grew as naturally as a rank weed on 
a dunghill. It sprang from ignorance and 
poverty and despair. It will appear wher¬ 
ever ignorance, poverty and despair are 
mixed together. Quite likely we shall 


124 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


have, with unrestricted immigration, a 
Bolshevist revolution first, then monarchy 
and Kultur. 

A great many persons are disposed to 
compare the present state of central and 
eastern Europe with the conditions in 
France at the time of the French Revolu¬ 
tion. I, for one, am not at all impressed by 
this easy explanation. The French Revo¬ 
lutionists represented and advocated a move¬ 
ment toward democracy for all Europe. 
Both the Germans and Russians have 
burst out upon us shouting that, in their 
peculiar system of tyranny and slavery, 
they had something better than democracy 
to proffer us. The average reading Ameri¬ 
can throws up his hands and cries, “What 
in Heaven’s name, will China next urge 
upon us, or Africa?” 

What has happened to us is, after all, 
upon reflection, quite simple. We are 
placed on the defensive for democracy. And 
we have wisely given over trying to urge 


FAILURE OF DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE 


125 


our point of view and our peculiar system 
upon those who not only reject it but openly 
despise it. No doubt this has been a severe 
shock to our ancient national conceit. Let 
me again emphasize that democracy seems 
to be, for the present, limited to the bound¬ 
aries of certain peculiar nations. Other 
peoples may evolve into democracy later. 
But their steps will be slow. Their ex¬ 
perience will be gained gradually. We can 
not help them much, if at all, by urging 
them merely to follow our example. Mean¬ 
while, if there be anything precious in de¬ 
mocracy for us, we had better bestir our¬ 
selves to save what we have left of it. 


CHAPTER XIII 


Foreign Outposts in the United States 

F OUR distinct national elements in the 
United States showed, in lesser or 
greater part, disloyalty and pro-Germanism 
during the War. These were the Germans, 
the Jewish Bolsheviki, the Sinn-Feiners, and 
the French-Canadians. Of course these four 
were no different from most other foreign¬ 
speaking elements. Only their standpoints 
and loyalties were clearly brought out by the 
war—that was all. Italian or Portuguese, 
Greek or Slav, in case their home country 
had been lined up against the United States, 
would have acted in just the same way. 

Here we must touch upon a fact which is 
pretty widely known or taken for granted. 
There is a fundamental difference between 
this later immigration and that of the mid¬ 
dle portion of the nineteenth century. The 
Germans, Hungarians, and Italians of 1848- 



FOREIGN OUTPOSTS IN THE UNITED STATES 127 

70, for instance, came to America for the 
same reason as most of the original British 
and Irish. They were seeking freedom and 
democracy. Their purposes were idealistic. 
They sought in the new country not only 
economic opportunity but political liberty 
which were denied them in the old. They 
were Americans at heart before they left 
their old home. 

The new immigration is totally different. 
This later swarm has come mostly to get 
jobs and money. Among them, no doubt, 
there are a few who are gifted with qualities 
of mind and character which make this de¬ 
scription inapplicable. I am referring to 
the many, not the few. In Southern and 
Eastern Europe they form the lowest grade 
of the working class and include a large 
percentage of beggers and peddlers, of 
thieves and criminals. The average im¬ 
migrant of this sort has been accustomed to 
a condition of poverty unknown to, and 
almost unimaginable to, the average Ameri¬ 
can. His physical standards of living are 


128 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


such as to make his competition with the 
original American worker unfair and deadly. 
Great masses of them have come without the 
slightest intention of remaining with us 
and adopting American standards. Herd¬ 
ed together under the most unsanitary con¬ 
ditions, hoarding up their wages with a 
greed incomprehensible to an American, 
crowds of them rush back to the country 
of their origin as soon as their savings 
are sufficient for their purposes. Mean¬ 
while they are replaced by others until 
the standards of living of the American- 
born wage-earners are hopelessly under¬ 
mined. Each immigrant who comes to us 
under these conditions prevents the founding 
of an American home and the birth of Ameri¬ 
can children. Let us hasten to add that their 
coming and going can not in any way be 
held as an accusation against themselves. 
Responsibility lies entirely with us. Employ¬ 
ers who bring them over, or prevent their 
rejection, under the conditions stated, are 
guilty of a monstrous crime against civili¬ 
zation. This crime is comparable to only 







Libation of Fellowshi 












FOREIGN OUTPOSTS IN THE UNITED STATES 129 


one other in our history—the African slave- 
trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries. 

Meanwhile every conception and in¬ 
stitution upon which our social and polit¬ 
ical life is established is torn from its mooring 
and broken up by the force of the inpouring 
waves. In Southern and Eastern Europe 
and in the Near East, these masses are, or 
have been, until very recently, ruled as they 
were in the Middle Ages. Rebellion against 
tyrants to them means acceptance of An¬ 
archism or Bolshevism, or at least German 
state Socialism. East of the Rhine and south 
of the Alps they are capable at present only 
of running wildly about from one tyranny 
to another, from one stupid blunder to 
another and back again. If this population 
in Europe is proving itself to be totally in¬ 
competent to govern itself, how can we ex¬ 
pect it to take an intelligent and useful 
part in all the complexities of democracy 
here? If a million Hungarians, for instance, 
have failed at every point of the political 



130 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


compass in Hungary, how, in Heaven’s 
name, can we expect them to succeed in 
New York or Chicago? That mass of Hun¬ 
garians, like Italians and Germans, like 
Jews and Greeks, induces the vilest sort of 
boss rule. They are largely kept away from 
our public schools by clerical opposition to 
our school system. A slave population in 
Europe, they become a slave population here. 
Politically they are the willing tools of every 
hidden and dangerous force at work in our 
public life. 

It is no part of my purpose to arouse, in 
the slightest degree, hatred of these people. 
Many of them are kind, innocent, simple, 
unknowing creatures. As strangers in a 
strange land, they deserve every degree of 
consideration, every means of help at our 
hands, which it is in our power to give to 
them. Their natural inclination, as well as 
their great numbers, are responsible for that 
separation from us which the foreign quarter 
implies. The continued use of foreign lan¬ 
guages, and the clinging to foreign customs, 


FOREIGN OUTPOSTS IN THE UNITED STATES 131 

are things which should never have been 
tolerated on our soil. By herding together 
they bring up their children in a foreign 
atmosphere, thus perpetuating and in¬ 
creasing the weaknesses and dangers which 
they have brought into our national life. 
I used the word “increasing” advisedly. In 
Europe each unit of this backward and in¬ 
ept mass of poor is merged in a nation which 
understands him and where he, in turn, 
somewhat understands his surroundings. 
But segregated by language and nationality 
here, they are broken away from their old 
moorings without binding themselves to 
the new. In the old world they are led polit¬ 
ically, sometimes, by men of education and 
ideals. With us they fall easy prey to any 
fool and fakir and dishonest representative 
of the political machine or vicious interest 
which may seek to prey upon them and mis¬ 
lead them. 

A few particular facts concerning propa- 
gandistic activities among our immigrant 
population may be illuminating if set down 


132 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


together. During the war the pro-Germans 
organized and conducted a most elaborate 
and expensive propaganda amongour Ukrain¬ 
ian immigrants. This was done in order 
to weaken Russia at home, both before and 
after the revolution. 

Sinn-Fein Irish, because of their in¬ 
veterate hatred of the British, were in many 
cases used to spread pro-German propa¬ 
ganda. This was effectual both before and 
after we went into the war. 

A very large percentage of the Russian 
Jews in New York City and elsewhere were, 
at the beginning of the war, pro-German be¬ 
cause they were anti-Russian. After we 
entered the war they were bitterly anti- 
American because they were pro-Bolshevist. 
No possible turn of events could make them 
take a pro-American position upon any 
issue under the sun. T his is the element, 
by the way, which used funds from Russia 
to carry on its pro-Bolshevistic propaganda 
among our Negroes. In certain places, in- 


FOREIGN OUTPOSTS IN THE UNITED STATES 133 


eluding New York City, it urged the Negroes 
to arm themselves and fight the whites. 

The French-Canadian immigrants among 
us number, with their children, nearly half 
a million. During the war they were, 
strange as it may seem, anti-French. The 
French-Canadian population is completely 
dominated, politically, socially and intel¬ 
lectually, by their clergy. These clericals 
still hate France and the French Govern¬ 
ment because the French Revolution over¬ 
threw the power of the Roman Church in 
France. They still belong to the ancient 
regime. So they naturally took the side of 
the ancient regime, the German side. Among 
us, they were largely passive. In Canada 
they actively opposed every war activity 
of their government from start to finish of 
the war. 

Of the Asiatics there are two main ele¬ 
ments—the Japanese and the East Indians. 
Of the East Indians there are not many, 
but their number is steadily increasing. 



134 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


They are being widely used to stir up an 
Indian revolution against the British Em¬ 
pire. Whether this is or is not justified we 
are not discussing here. The point is that 
this foreign element is using America as a 
vantage-point from which to make war upon 
another country. 

Finally, we come to the Japanese. Here 
we find the climax of this whole matter. 
The religion of the Japanese immigrants is, 
primarily, Mikado-worship. Sums of money 
to build the temples for this delectable form 
of religious expression are furnished largely 
by the Japanese government. When we 
ponder these facts we may well ask whether 
we as a nation do not ourselves require a 
guardian. We resemble a five-year old child 
with a purse full of money, sitting in a poker 
game with greedy and astute gamblers. To 
carry our sentimentalism so far, to overwork 
the theory of the brotherhood of man to such 
an extent as this, is to court total disaster. 
We as a nation are asleep because selfish, cor¬ 
rupt and designing interests among us have 


FOREIGN OUTPOSTS IN THE UNITED STATES 135 


drugged us out of our senses. These great 
interests want cheap labor. They are aided 
in their designs by a crowd of well-meaning 
but ignorant sentimentalists, most of whom 
do not dream that they are helping to de¬ 
stroy our American nation in order to ex¬ 
perience an emotional satisfaction. The 
employers get their cheap labor, and the 
sentimentalists their self-satisfaction. We, 
the foolish majority, are losing our free¬ 
dom and our country. If the facts do not 
cry us into action, why multiply words? All 
America is hoping, praying and preparing 
for peace with Japan. But to further per¬ 
mit even the smallest amount of Japanese 
immigration will surely tend to war. In 
the event of war any American in Japan will 
undoubtedly take the side of his own country. 
We shall fully expect him to do so. For the 
same reason the hundred and fifty thousand 
Japanese in our own country will prove to 
be a hundred and fifty thousand skillful and 
resolute enemies. Making an American out 
of a Japanese under the conditions above 
described is as impossible as making a sheep 


136 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


out of a goat, or a dog out of a cat. As to 
whether or not we are superior to the Japa¬ 
nese, is not the matter at issue here. The 
important fact right here is that we differ 
greatly from each other in the basic things 
of life, and these differences are largely in¬ 
herited qualities. Furthermore, these differ¬ 
ences must surely make Japanese amalgama¬ 
tion with our people wholly undesirable. 
Such a mixture of bloods runs counter to a 
fundamental principle of biology which all 
high-school children learn as a matter of 
course. The offspring of such a blending 
of widely different stocks are likely to be 
unstable in mind. In general they can not 
qualify as to either the physical, mental or 
moral standards of either race. In amal¬ 
gamation there is likely to be a loss from the 
standards of either side. 

The Japanese child in the United States 
is sent to a school owned and controlled by 
the Japanese Government. There he is 
taught the language, ideals and duty of an 
abject subject of the Mikado. Finally, 


FOREIGN OUTPOSTS IN THE UNITED STATES 137 


the Japanese birth rate in California is 
sixty-nine per thousand annually, the white 
birth rate nineteen per thousand. 

“But the pure descendants of the Japanese 
immigrants may surely change and become 
real Americans,” I hear somebody saying. 
Meanwhile, we have just been informed 
that the son of German parents in Cincin¬ 
nati, who had accepted a Captain-Surgeon’s 
commission in our army and gone to 
France had not been perfectly Americanized. 
The fellow was hanged for inoculating our 
soldiers with disease germs instead of ty¬ 
phoid serum. This creature was born and 
reared not in the United States, but in the 
German section of Cincinnati. With this 
in mind we expect to Americanize the Japa¬ 
nese, the very breath of whose intense re¬ 
ligious emotion is the sacred worship of 
their absolute and august ruler, the Mikado! 

Be it a million Russians or a million 
Japanese, a million Italians or a million 
French-Canadians—either their importa¬ 
tion or their birth upon our soil prevents by 


138 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


the stifling force of economic competition 
the birth of a million Americans. In the 
name of Almighty God and our country, 
what has become of our brains? These facts 
are enough to make any of us not totally 
bereft of his senses to go into the highways 
and the byways crying for the Knights of 
the Ku Klux Klan, or if some man has a 
better plan for safeguarding the nation con¬ 
juring him in God’s name to proclaim it. 


CHAPTER XIV 


The Racial Limitations of Democracy 

D EMOCRACY is the practice of self- 
government by the people. It is the 
rule of law instead of persons; of the majority 
instead of the minority or individual. As a 
system both of government and social life 
it has but recently been either widely ac¬ 
cepted in theory or established in practice. 
A short three hundred years mark its very 
real advance in the modern world. Only 
during the past hundred years has majority 
rule been accepted as desirable or possible 
among a very few of the more advanced 
countries. If we examine the political map 
of the world we find that the triumphs of 
democracy are limited to but a few nations. 
We may generalize by observing that a 
very few nations have but recently succeeded 
in making democracy work. 

What part is democracy likely to play in 
various quarters of the world during our 


140 


THE KEAN UNMASKED 


present century? Are we to see, now that 
Europe and Asia are torn from end to end by 
revolutions, a sudden adaptation of all these 
backward peoples to the democratic method ? 
All recognize that we are just now going 
through one of the greatest of revolution¬ 
ary periods in history. Maybe the millenium 
of universal freedom and democracy is 
even now at hand. Let us see. 

The practice of political democracy to¬ 
day is practically limited to two main groups 
of nations—the English-speaking and the 
Latin. Of the latter group, Spain alone tarries 
in the Middle Ages. Besides these we have 
Holland and the three Scandinavian coun¬ 
tries, which, while ruled by kings, are demo¬ 
cratic in both thought and practice. In a 
previous chapter we have described the 
pitiful surrender of the German people to 
absolute monarchy and state socialism, and 
their recent trembling efforts toward free¬ 
dom, as well as the sad miscarriage of the 
attempted democratic revolution in Russia. 



RACIAL LIMITATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 141 


Beyond the limits of Europe, the two 
Americas, and English-speaking colonies 
over seas, there is little enough hope for the 
growth of democracy anywhere in the im^ 
mediate future. The most fulsome opti¬ 
mism can not expect the Chinese republic 
to succeed in our day. For a long time in 
the future, as in the past, the “white man’s 
burden” is going to include practically the 
whole of Asia and Africa. 

The limitations of democracy are set 
by many considerations. These involve 
first the state of biological evolution in 
which a particular race finds itself; second, 
the particular history of the particular 
country under discussion. The African 
Negro can not realize democracy today be¬ 
cause he is psychically, and hence morally 
unfitted for its responsibilities. The cause 
here is biological. The German people are 
the first cousins of the English, being much 
the same in blood. The difference between 
the two peoples are not biological, but 
historical. 


142 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


Democracy in practice requires certain 
mental and moral qualities. The most out¬ 
standing among these are intellectual acu¬ 
men and a knowledge of public affairs. 
Among the moral essentials are a spirit 
of good sportsmanship, a profound regard 
for the rules of common honesty, and 
above all, a fine sense of personal honor. 
Democracy must be based upon character. 
Every qualification we have mentioned 
necessitates a large measure of economic 
freedom; for without this, the individual is 
enslaved and driven in things political. 
They imply, also, freedom from tyranny of 
intermeddling by any religious power. Unity 
of church and state, or the interference in 
politics by a religious organization for 
ulterior purposes, makes true democracy 
impossible. The individual citizen must 
always have perfect freedom of political 
choice. For the masses in any nation to 
acquire these qualities is to place that 
nation in the very front rank of the world's 
political civilization. 


RACIAL LIMITATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 14J 


We now come to the most important 
element of all. In any well ordered demo¬ 
cratic country there must be a high degree 
of unity in both the thought and feeling of 
the people. There is a principle of mechanics 
involved here. It the machine is to run at 
all, its parts must function together proper¬ 
ly. If it is to run smoothly, without mishap 
of any sort, then those parts must have 
been most carefully fitted and adjusted 
together. If a population is seriously 
divided along lines of race, language, re¬ 
ligion, or social classes, in just so far is a 
working democracy made difficult. Given 
enough differences and the machine breaks 
down. For instance, Switzerland is often 
cited as a country where democracy works 
even though the people are divided into 
three language groups. Nothing is more un¬ 
true. In Switzerland the entire population 
is united because almost everybody uses two 
or three languages in common instead of 
one. Religious differences among the Swiss 
are not dangerous to democracy because 
church and state are completely separated, 


144 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


and it is taken for granted that no church 
shall meddle in the slightest degree in po¬ 
litical affai rs. 

Any larger disunity robs a nation of its 
hope of democracy. Witness the peculiar 
failure in the democratic effort in Russia, 
where the fanatical sect of Bolsheviki has 
set up a dictatorship in the name of the 
wage-working class alone. What a lesson 
can be learned from Poland, where re¬ 
ligious difficulties have recently resulted in 
bloody riots; or in Italy, where Nationalists? 
Socialists, Communists and Catholics, each 
organized into a party, have recently 
gone out seeking the blood of one or more 
of the opponents. In this the famous words 
of Lincoln forever come into mind. “A 
house divided against itself can not stand. 
This nation can not endure half slave and 
half free. It will be all the one thing or all 
the other.” Democracy in America has 
been successful hitherto because we have 
been enabled, first and last, at whatever 
sacrifices, to preserve our national unity. 








THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE 
Where Country, Our Home, The Klan and Each Other are Secured 









RACIAL LIMITATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 145 


Democracy is limited to those nations 
whose citizens possess these peculiar and 
lofty qualifications of mind and character. 
It is limited to nations which are blessed 
with unity and solidarity among its people. 
It is further limited to nations which have 
grown into the practice of democracy 
during long experience. Instead of asking 
what nations and peoples are likely to fail 
at democracy, we had better start by in¬ 
quiring as to what few nations are fortu¬ 
nate enough to possess all of these quali¬ 
fications which, taken together, make de¬ 
mocracy possible. 

Democracy, we shall all agree, can not 
develop among the Australian bushmen. It 
will not develop among the gypsies. It will 
not develop, for a long time, among the 
African Negroes. Democracy will grow 
slowly among the white peoples of central and 
eastern Europe. It will probably grow much 
more slowly among the brown and yellow 
peoples of Asia. We can best advance the 
cause of democracy in our time by saving 


146 


THE KEAN UNMASKED 


it and developing it in those countries where 
it has been already pretty well established. 
Surely the greatest possible service we 
can render the cause of democracy among 
the peoples not yet wholly fitted for 
its practice is to give them a high and 
striking example of its success in our own 
country. The supreme battle for democracy 
in this our day is taking place in the minds 
and hearts of American citizens. There is no 
immediate cause for doubt and worry con¬ 
cerning the preservation of democracy in 
Great Britain and France. There is cause 
for deepest concern in our own country, 
whose democracy is threatened from every 
side, by greedy and designing powers above, 
as by a great mass of incompetent, un¬ 
principled and undemocratic voters from 
below. 


CHAPTER XV 


The American Negro as Ward 
of The Nation 

G rover Cleveland once declared 

thatone American problem for which he 
saw no solution whatever was the problem of 
the Negro. If we were in “The land of the 
beginning again, that country of our dreams, 
we should, of course, not bring the Negro 
to our shores. It is easy to idealize our 
American ancestors, but no doubt they 
made enough errors in their time. Their 
most gigantic blunder, one to make Provi¬ 
dence himself almost despair of humanity, 
was the Afro-American slave trade. “Man’s 
inhumanity to man” brings at last the 
greatest of all sorrows upon him who works 
the inhumanity. 

The first emotion that thought of the 
great problem of the Negro must awaken in 
the hearts of all Americans is humility. 
Before Almighty God we must resolve in 


148 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


this matter to do justice, and more than 
justice. Here more than any other place, 
we must be moved by Christlike kindness 
and love. The bane of us Americans, in 
all periods of our history, has been careless¬ 
ness. We have a tendency to let things 
drift from bad to worse. Such has been par¬ 
ticularly the case with reference to our 
attitude toward the Negro. It is high time that 
we applied to our public thinking some of 
that sounder knowledge of society and social 
laws which recent years have given to us. 

Why should the simple truth give of¬ 
fense to anybody? The Negro in Africa is 
a childish barbarian. Left to himself, he 
has never at any time or place evolved even 
the beginning of a civilization. Do what 
we may in the way of an education, the 
mind of the pure Negro, compared to the 
white, on the average does not get beyond 
the age of twelve years. To ignore this 
fact is to get into error from the start. Con¬ 
tinue to ignore this fact, especially in the 
execution of larger national policies, and 


THE AMERICAN NEGRO 


149 


we shall invite, as we have done in the past, 
trouble that is deep and dangerous. Two facts 
should be remembered if we would make 
real progress in this discussion. The first is that 
only those who live among the Negro and 
so learn to know him at first hand can really 
understand his manifold traits. To sit 
down five hundred miles from the nearest 
considerable Negro population and write 
books about the Negro is not likely to help 
much. 

The second fact to be kept constant¬ 
ly in mind relates to our population of 
mixed blood. Every distinguished leader 
of the Negro race in the United States has 
been part white. In fact, a majority of 
the more distinguished have contained only 
a small infusion of Negro blood. It is the 
presence of this Mulatto element which 
clothes the whole problem in porcupine 
quills. It is this portion of our colored 
population which is restless and often un¬ 
happy to the point of bitterness because of 
our present policy with reference to the 


150 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


Negro. If there were no mixed population 
to consider our problem would not be 
nearly so difficult. 

I have always felt that superficial minds 
have a peculiar tendency to lay hold of the 
Negro problem. For instance, witness the 
illogical claims of some of those who think 
they are the special friends of the Negro 
and who continually emphasize the necessity 
for an enlarged sphere for Negro opportunity. 
On the one hand they boast of the very 
great progress the Negro has made during 
his half century of freedom. On one page 
they will emphasize Negro accomplishment. 
More than half of our adult Negro popu¬ 
lation, for instance, can read and write. 
Tens of thousands of Negro families own 
their own farms or city homes. An even 
greater number of Negroes are attending 
high schools and colleges. Then, on the 
very next page, the same author will take 
pains to show that the Negro is most 
foully treated. He is kept in ignorance and 
poverty. The wicked white population 


THE AMERICAN NEGRO 


151 


which surrounds him denies him every 
advantage and means of progress. Of 
course both of these tales can not be true 
at the same time. 

Those of us who grew up among the 
Negroes and have lived with them on terms 
of mutual kindness and of helpfulness all our 
lives are inclined to the conclusion that it 
is easy to exaggerate the progress of the 
Negro. The record of what we people of the 
South have done and have tried to do for 
the Negro during these fifty years is an 

% 

open book to all the world. It need not be 
described or analyzed here. Our task has 
not been easy. In general, I think we have 
tried to do it in a way to win both the 
approval of our own conscience and the 
commendation of our fellow citizens of other 
sections of the country. Yet we have acted 
not only according to our means, but also 
according to our knowledge of what could 
be accomplished. In so far as we have 
failed we simply ask that our fellow citi¬ 
zens of the North and West make special 


152 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


effort to understand the true cause of our 
failure. 

This brings us to the main issue of this 
discussion. The Negro problem is not pecu¬ 
liar to the South. The Negro problem is 
the burden of the nation as a whole. The 
Negro was brought here during the seven¬ 
teenth and eighteenth centuries on the 
merchant ships which sailed mostly from 
the ports of Great Britain and New Eng¬ 
land. Some few put forth from Phila¬ 
delphia and New York, but none from the 
South. This was not due to the fact that 
all Southern people were morally above 
taking advantage of the African slave trade. 
It was because commerce on the high seas 
was not developed in the South. We were 
then wholly agricultural. But the fact 
remains. The Negroes were brought to us 
by the ships of old England and New Eng¬ 
land. For this terrible error of all the 
English-speaking world of colonial times 
we in the South have paid and paid and paid. 
We have paid by reason of the very fact 


THE AMERICAN NEGRO 


153 


\ 

of slavery, which continued so long among 
us because no one knew how to make an 
end of it. We have paid and are still pay¬ 
ing in the form of the most inefficient labor 
force in the world. We paid in the War 
Between the States and during the Re¬ 
construction, until extinction threatened us; 
and we still pay. Not the least portion of 
our bill is the disesteem in which we are 
often so wrongly held by those of our own 
language and blood throughout the world. 
Yet we patiently await the day of complete 
understanding, of perfect reconciliation. 

How long will it be before our modern 
knowledge of the fundamental facts of 
American history are accepted and used in 
our political and social thinking? Slavery 
continued in the South and died out in the 
North not because our people were different 
at the start. They were quite the same. But 
the climate was different. Crops were 
different. In the South the slaves pro¬ 
duced cotton, tobacco, and sugar-cane dur¬ 
ing a long growing season, and hence 


154 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


slaves were profitable to their masters. In 
the North where they produced only food 
and fodder crops during a short growing 
season, slaves were an economic loss. 
Short summers and long winters do not 
permit the Negro to become a permanent 
inhabitant of Northern climes. So the few 
Northern slaves were mostly sold South and 
total emancipation followed. 

Meanwhile, let it not be forgotten that 
during the period when cotton was king, the 
North shared with the South in the profits of 
slave labor. The economic system of our 
country was based upon cotton and to¬ 
bacco. For a full generation it took the 
following form: the South sent her prod¬ 
ucts to Europe, America received, in re¬ 
turn, not commodities but capital. This 
capital was invested in railroads and other 
public improvements. Pennsylvania, New 
York and New England furnished the arti¬ 
cles of manufacture which the South needed 
at prices much higher than obtained in 
Europe. These high prices were main- 


THE AMERICAN NEGRO 


155 


tained through a protective tariff. The 
profits of slave labor were thus divided 
between the South and the North. When, 
in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, 
Virginia led the border states in demanding 
the Constitutional prohibition of African 
slave trade, the New England delegates 
joined with those of the far South in keep¬ 
ing this nefarious traffic open for twenty- 
one years more. When we say today that 
the problem is in every sense a national 
problem, we base our statement not only 
upon present necessity—but also upon 
the basis of historical facts which lead to 
definite conclusions. 

Finally, the title of this chapter has a 
wider significance which I would emphasize 
with all possible vigor. In maintaining 
that the Negro is a ward of the nation I 
wish to place emphasis upon WARD. The 
Negro’s presence among us requires an ever 
greater interest and care on our part. It is 
high time that the people of the South made 
a wider appeal to their fellow citizens of the 


156 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


North and West. A stupendous moral 
responsibility is involved in the presence of 
these ten millions of black people. Not 
only the past, but the future, too, is looking 
down upon us. All Americans may well real¬ 
ize that in this, as in so many other matters, 
we are being weighed in the balance as a 
nation. As a people we are fortunate in 
being quick to let bygones be bygones. We 
of the South know that if other sections come 
to understand us and our peculiar problem 
better, not only we, but they also, will be 
the ultimate gainers. The sooner the nation 
unites in looking upon our ten millions of 
colored folk as ten millions of children for 
whose protection and care we are morally 
responsible, the sooner we shall all be 
placed upon solid ground. 

Let me repeat here what I have been con¬ 
stantly touching upon in these chapters. 
The maxims of our democracy are not for 
universal application. Some Europeans 
are a hundred years, others five hundred 
years, behind us in the process of democratic 


i 


THE AMERICAN NEGRO 


157 


evolution. We may guess, but we can not 
know, how long they will be in catching up. 
How far behind them the Negro may be in 
these things I leave for the anthropologists 
to determine or surmise. But what we of 
the South assuredly know, because of our 
experience, is just this—to treat the Negro 
as the political equal of the white is to do 
grave injustice not only to the white, but to 
the Negro as well. We can not justly enforce 
the laws among children that we make for 
adults. To enforce the white man’s law, in 
all cases, upon the Negro is an injustice so 
great that the effort often causes sorrow to 
every normal mind among us. Cared for 
and protected as a child, the Negro’s better 
qualities are developed and made evident 
by his works. But when he is burdened by 
moral and legal responsibilities which neither 
his mind nor his character is prepared to 
bear, in the vast majority of cases he breaks 
and falls under the load. The errors of our 
mistaken policies during the past fifty 
years have caused unfathomable suffering 
among our Negroes. Our country took its 



158 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


foolish fling and sowed its wild oats of 
democratic Utopia during Reconstruction 
days. We proved then that the vote is an 
unmitigated curse to the Negro. From this 
curse he still suffers. We were forced by 
Federal act to make him everywhere subject 
to the white man’s civil and criminal law. 
Often enough the white man’s law sends him 
to the penitentiary for twenty years when 
twenty days of hard work upon the public 
highway would be punishment enough for 
his unthinking crime. Jn this matter we 
have simply tried to put a gallon of water 
into a quart bottle. So we have spilled much 
water and come near breaking the bottle. 
The people of the Philippine Islands are, 
on the average, much more highly developed 
than our Negroes. Yet the better advised 
among them realize that they are not yet 
ready to get on without our supervision 
and help. 

Let me not be misunderstood. I am not 
here trying to offer any permanent solution 
for certain aspects of this problem. That 


THE AMERICAN NEGRO 


159 


solution if ultimately sought will require, 
for many years, the painstaking and united 
efforts of our best thinkers in all sections. 
I am now merely stating certain facts and 
principles upon which any future solution 
whatsoever must be based. All I ask is 
that we take these facts into every phase of 
our argument. The Negro is not yet pre¬ 
pared, mentally or morally, to share all the 
results of our civilization with us. Amid 
the great complexities of modern social 
and political life, it is difficult indeed to 
prepare our white electorate to bear the 
responsibilities of government. Wherever 
the Negro numbers twenty per cent of our 
population, his vote on election day would 
endanger democracy. In every state where 
he lives there are and will be vicious white 
demagogues who will work upon his credu¬ 
lity to mislead him and misuse him political¬ 
ly. Where he numbers forty per cent of the 
population, his suffrage would throw us 
back to Reconstruction times and make- 
democracy impossible. Let us not refuse to 
shoulder the full burden of this responsi- 


160 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


bility. But the burden belongs rightfully to 
the Nation as a whole, not to the people 
of the South alone. We of the South know 
full well that, once rightly understood by 
thoughtful minds in other sections, we can 
ask the nation to undertake those larger poli¬ 
cies of reform and readjustment which con¬ 
ditions undoubtedly require. 


































Revealing the Mysteries at Midnight 








CHAPTER XVI 

We Americans are a Peculiar People 


E VEN among the various nationalities 
of the white race there are very great 
differences of character and temperament. 
To try to overlook these, to declare that 
they do not exist, is both dishonest and 
dangerous. Moved by the inspiration of a 
common cause in the Great War, no doubt 
the American troops and the French people 
made every possible effort to be agreeable 
and companionable. Still their very real 
differences caused friction. We recognize all 
sorts of peculiar characteristics among in¬ 
dividuals. Why this folly of trying to deny 
their existence among nations? Sound con¬ 
clusions in any matter are reached only by 
starting with facts. But the humanitarian 
and sentimental purposes which some of us 
have in mind often lead to the misuse of 
facts. Self-deception is the very last support 
upon which to build a sense of international 
or interracial friendship and good will. 


162 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


Democracy, as a working system, as we 
have said in previous articles, is peculiar 
to a few nations of the white race. As 
such it is perhaps the greatest social and 
spiritual adventure in the history of human¬ 
ity. Democracy can thrive only where it 
sinks its roots deep into the personality of 
the individual soul. In a successful de¬ 
mocracy the citizen must be free, honest, 
intelligent, informed, sportsmanlike, and 
willing to be always active in the perform¬ 
ance of his political duties. These qualities 
can not be brought forth by the hocus- 
pocus of wishing them upon anybody. They 
are the result of a long evolution. They 
have grown, thus far, only in particular 
environments and only among peculiar 
peoples whose whole history furnishes the 
essential background. 

It is often pointed out as an evidence of 
the success which follows the mixing of our 
various nationalities, that we original Ameri¬ 
cans have resulted from the greatest of all 
mixtures. We began, in Colonial times, as 


WE AMERICANS ARE A PECULIAR PEOPLE 163 

English, Welsh, Scotch and Irish; as French, 
Dutch, German and Swedish elements. The 
results of this mixture, we conclude, have 
been entirely satisfactory. But right here 
we are apt to come to error. 

True, the original American people were 
formed by the mixture of these various 
nationalities. Yet the success of out great 
experiment was due to the fact of a much 
greater social unity than at first appears on 
the surface. Our American people were 
drawn, mostly, from a single European 
class. This was the class of small property- 
holders and skilled workers. They came 
from the progressive countries to the north 
and west of Europe. What members of 
the British country gentry who came to 
Virginia and South Carolina were quickly 
unified with those among whom they set¬ 
tled. Indeed, ever since Magna Charta, the 
English country gentry were thrown to¬ 
gether, especially in the House of Commons, 
with the representatives of the small farmers 
and the towns people. To ignore this fact 


164 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


of essential unity is to leave Hamlet out of 
the play. The dominant group, the great 
majority in every colony, was this mixture 
of gentry, independent small farmers, shop¬ 
keepers and skilled mechanics. This was 
then the rising class of Europe, strug¬ 
gling to find itself; hungering to give 
expression of its peculiar form of civili¬ 
zation; ardent in its desire for larger free¬ 
dom. These facts can not be over-emphasized. 

The original settlers, in large part, came 
to America to find the freedom and political 
opportunity they so richly deserved. If 
they did not, at once, always grant freedom 
to others in their own settlements, there 
was plenty of room for the others elsewhere. 
The Baptists, driven out of Massachusetts, 
found refuge in Rhode Island. The Quakers, 
whipped out of New England, discovered 
room and to spare in Pennsylvania. The 
Cavaliers, forced into exile during the Puri¬ 
tanic tyranny of the Commonwealth period, 
settled in Virginia and South Carolina. 
When the French Protestants came, after 


WE AMERICANS ARE A PECULIAR PEOPLE 165 

the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 
1685, they were not really foreigners in 
America. They possessed the same faith, 
they were guided by exactly the same system 
of morals, they were the same class of people 
basically, as those among whom they settled. 
One of the most liberal and democratic 
groups to organize a colony were the Eng¬ 
lish Catholics of Maryland. The secret of 
understanding the beginnings of America 
is to know that there was room for every¬ 
body and for everybody’s beliefs. Even 
the bigot in Europe eventually became the 
liberal here. The indentured servant, of 
whom there were comparatively few, event¬ 
ually found freedom and acquired property 
in the wilderness. 

It was this abundant opportunity to 
possess free land which finally led to the 
complete triumph of our democracy. The 
real America has always been country 
America. The settlers came from Europe 
ready in mind and heart for the great ad¬ 
venture. The effort required independence, 


168 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


astray by the deceitfulness of riches. Final¬ 
ly we are apt to become blind to the quieter 
graces and refinements of life. In certain 
sections an original austerity gives way 
these days to pleasures that do not really 
please anybody. Having conquered a con¬ 
tinent with such tumult and shouting, we 
have not yet learned how to live sanely or 
even safely. The finer values of life easily 
elude us, even when we try to seek them 
out. Yet, are we entirely in error when we 
claim that we, as a people, have had some¬ 
thing valuable placed in our keeping by 
our history and evolution? Are we not 
worth preserving in the world? We know 
that we are. Even in the moments marked 
by failure and humility we can not lose our 
national pride and sense of worth. 

Assuredly, we Americans are a peculiar 
people. The conditions of our European 
origin gave us a careful selection of personal 
qualities. Our remarkable environment has 
upbuilded us. Infinite possibilities have 
been opened up to us through the extent and 


WE AMERICANS ARE A PECULIAR PEOPLE 169 


resources of our country. We have lacked 
nothing needful to a great destiny. Our 
future has seemed so certain that we have 
never permitted it to be questioned. So 
have we been prepared to become the an¬ 
cestors of a glorious and ever unfolding 
race. And now, within the short span of 
half a dozen years, we are given over to 
every terrible doubt and misgiving. Ours 
has been, were we but so minded, the wonder¬ 
ful privilege of continuing to select the 
ancestors of America’s future. We have 
shamelessly neglected this privilege which 
is, indeed, the most sacred of duties. The 
ancestors of America’s future sons and 
daughters have been recently drawn, in 
large part, from the most stolid peasantry 
and denizens of the slums of Europe and 
Asia, simply because these sell themselves 
cheapest in the labor markets of the world. 
So we are self-accursed. History may un¬ 
fold every page of her story and discover 
nowhere a profounder reason than this for 
damning a great nation to destruction. 


170 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


Our peculiar Nordic civilization, the 
creation, par excellence, of the whitest of 
the white European races, has found but 
one primary field for its larger expansion. 
That field is North America. Both South 
America and Africa lie too much within the 
tropics to make of them the homeofour race. 
The Southern extremity of South America, 
including Argentina and Chile, possesses a 
soil and climate comparable to our own in 
the Northern and border states. But the 
incoming Mediterranean people are giving 
this temperate area the aspect of a sub¬ 
tropical civilization. 

The larger portions of both tropical South 
America and all of Africa will no doubt 
be kept for or won for the darker peoples. 
The white population of South Africa is now 
less than twenty per cent of the whole. 
Australia, too, is largely tropical. Within 
the greater portion of her territory the 
Nordic white man can hardly conserve, 
through centuries, his distinctive physical 
and spiritual qualities. Our North American 
continent was destined by history to be the 


WE AMERICANS ARE A PECULIAR PEOPLE 171 


greater Nordic Europe. Here our stalwart 
race has been offered a gigantic area for its 
expansion—a suitable field upon which to 
play its mighty part in all the future. In¬ 
deed, this marvelous home is suited by 
nature to meet our reasonable needs for 
many thousands of years. An intelligent 
population policy might have permitted us 
to welcome from Northern Europe a con¬ 
siderable number of immigrants through¬ 
out the twentieth century. 

Restricted to Europe and a few outlying 
insular colonies, our race will, at an early 
date, cut but a sorry figure beside the popu¬ 
lations of the colored peoples on the one 
hand, and the undeveloped white peoples 
on the other. The British Empire is today 
more than three-fourths colored. The 
World War has only hastened the sinking 
of the hopes of the European. The “natural” 
tendency in racial evolution is always for 
the races with the more developed standards 
of life and culture to be dragged down and 
engulfed by the surrounding world of less 


172 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


developed peoples. A high standard of 
living with leisure among the masses must 
be jealously preserved from competition or 
it will become extinct in another generation. 
The most expensive thing in the world is 
a moral ideal. The most wasteful system of 
government is a democracy. But these 
things are worth the cost. We Americans 
have set out upon a great adventure in 
social life. We have made some valuable 
discoveries. Our spiritual possessions are 
numerous and valuable. We can not 
successfully give them to all the world by first 
letting the world take them away from our¬ 
selves. The “rising tide” of the colored 
peoples and the backward white peoples^ 
their ultimate domination of the human proc¬ 
ess, to-day OVER-TOPS IN IMPOR¬ 
TANCE EVERY OTHER FACT IN THE 
WORLD. 

We are throwing away North America 
as the home of our people and our civiliza¬ 
tion. Were we to open our gates to hostile 
armies and welcome the yoke of servitude 


WE AMERICANS ARE A PECULIAR PEOPLE 173 


to a foreign autocracy, the results, in the 
end might be less tragic. In the Hawaii of 
to-day, with its white American element a 
small minority and rapidly becoming a 
fading remnant, we see the North America 
of to-morrow. Across the length and 
breadth of our Continent falls the darken¬ 
ing shadow. 


CHAPTER XVII 


Giantism—the National Disease 
of America 

G IANTISM is a disease. In the human 
body it is caused when certain glands 
do not function properly. A child does not 
stop growing in the right way or at the 
right time. Perhaps the whole body, more 
often parts of the body, grow to enormous 
size. The head or the hands may become 
too large. The features are apt to be made 
ugly by frightful distortions. For any child 
to grow too fast is dangerous. For certain 
organs or features, or the whole body, to 
keep on growing when the time has come 
for them to retain normal size is in itself a 
sign of this terrible disease of—Giantism. 

Economic and social giantism is the 
curse of the United States. Our larger cities 
have grown far beyond the bounds of 
national safety. New York, Chicago, and 
a dozen other large cities are monstrosities. 




GIANTISM—NATIONAL DISEASE 


175 


It will take a full generation, with no im¬ 
migration at all, and the forces of reform 
fully mobilized, to bring them to correspond 
properly with the other parts of our country. 
Everywhere the disease works havoc. We 
crowd a few square miles with stupendous 
structures, leaving narrow chasms for 
streets. Each new building shuts the light 
and air away from many others. Then we 
pack ourselves into these buildings more 
like stifled vermin than human beings. 
Whereupon we go about the world boasting 
in a loud voice, as though we deserved 
praise for our achievement. 

Giantism is found in every form of our 
national activity. We measure the greatness 
of a university by the size and number of 
its buildings, or by the millions of money 
which constitute its endowment. The rich¬ 
est among us in money figure most in the 
newspapers, which proves that they are 
considered by the public to be the most im¬ 
portant. An author is held in esteem in 
proportion to the number of copies of his 


176 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


books which are sold. Works of art prove 

interesting because they bring fabulous 

prices on the market. At every census the 

inhabitants of our cities and states wait 

with bated breath to discover whether or 

not thev have increased in numbers more 
¥ 

than their neighbors. 

Giantism everywhere. To boast of the 
greatest city as the city with the most 
people is like boasting of an enormous scrofu¬ 
lous swelling. We even boast of the height of 
mountains, the size of lakes, or the length 
of rivers, as though we had created them 
all. One state cries out that it is the first 
in the production of hogs, another that it 
slaughters more wild animals and peddles 
more furs than any other. Often there are 
not nearly enough houses to shelter the 
people of a “great” city; many of the 
students of a “great” university may leave 
as ignorant as they came, and weaker in 
mind and morals. The colossal battleships 
we build are used as targets before the sound 
of our boasting has died away. Our piled 
















The Fiery Cross on the Mountain Top. 






GIANTISM—NATIONAL DISEASE 177 

I 

up statistics of “progress” mostly prove our 
degeneracy. 

All this seems to escape the accredited 
leaders and teachers of the people. The 
tendency shows in us as individuals. A large 
proportion of our people are cursed by 
overeating, lack of exercise and overweight. 
Meanwhile the unemployed may starve. 
Everywhere that old and absolutely sound 
principle of “plain living and high thinking” 
is surrendered for the exact opposite. In 
all our great cities we build palatial 
private residences which are more fit for 
cold storage houses than for human hab¬ 
itations. A woman pays fifty thousand 
dollars for a fur wrap weighing two pounds. 
If the most abominable whiskey at ten 
dollars a quart did not find plenty of 
purchasers, the price would be falling in¬ 
stead of rising. Behold the size, weight and 
contents of our Sunday newspapers! They 
need no further describing here. A popular 
magazine recently contained eighty-two 
pages of advertising, and less than twenty 


178 


THE KEAN UNMASKED 


pages of reading matter. In whole sections 
of our cities natural human affection is lav¬ 
ished on expensive dogs. In other sections 
the swarming children of the poor lack 
food, shelter, clothing, affectionate care 
and education. Meanwhile we boast of both 
the number of children and the value of the 
dogs. Fatty degeneration of the heart is one 
symptom of giantism. 

If we continue in the way we are going, 
our future national self can be easily enough 
pictured. Any amateur mathematician can 
plot the curve of our “progress.” Our 
wealth to-day totals two hundred and fifty 
billions. Pretty soon we shall be worth a 
full trillion. The last census of New York 
gives its population as 5,620,000. Of this 
total a single Brooklyn insane asylum con¬ 
tains four thousand. Several of our states 
spend as much of their taxes to care for the 
insane as to educate their young. Let us 
have pencil and paper and calculate how 
many will be shut up in lunatic asylums or 
homes for other defectives, and what will 


GIANTISM—NATIONAL DISEASE 


179 


be the cost of their keep, when we number 
three hundred millions of people. If we 
bring all the underfed masses, all the beg¬ 
gars and peddlers and criminals from every 
country in the world, and thrust them into 
our over-populated cities to prey upon us, 
then, assuredly, we shall have soon enough 
more inhabitants than China or India. 
Some of our private dwellings now cost as 
high as eight millions each and the windows 
are boarded up because the owners live in 
Europe. According to our present standards 
that, too, may be taken as an indication of 
our “progress” and “greatness.” 

Of course the masses of the factory and 
office population, and most of the idle 
rich, are physical weaklings. They get no 
adequate exercise. They breathe no clean 
air. In some of our southern states the 
curse of degenerating factory labor for young 
children is still permitted by law. But 
whether enslaved in factory, idle upon the 
streets, or shut up in a crowded apartment 
the child of the city has no fair chance to 


180 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


grow. Always the thought—this mass of 
weaklings is fit only to be the subj ect of a more 
or less absolute monarch. They can not be 
citizens in a republic that is a reality. Any 
strong, healthy, normal American farmer 
turns from looking upon these city types, 
hopeless for his country. Our cities are not 
built to live in. They are built to get 
rich in. Jefferson was right. Unless they 
are reformed they will destroy both de¬ 
mocracy and civilization. Somehow we 
must spread our cities out in the air and 
sun upon the countryside. 

The old America of our fathers is every¬ 
where fading from sight. The new Ameri¬ 
ca is full upon us. And that new America 
is rapidly becoming a stench in the nostrils 
of the decent and intelligent minority. We 
Americans must change our ways. We need 
a great revival—a revival of common 
sense and healthy-mindedness. Our 
national life is starving for the want of 
fine, thoughtful, educated, young persons 
with the courage to wish themselves poor. 




GIANTISM—NATIONAL DISEASE 


181 


Our whole national life must change its 
direction. We are not going ahead. We are 
going backward. Instead of seeking to 
find, through our wealth, a richness of mind 
and heart, we crave yet more bigness and 
fatness in things purely physical. We seek 
our brother's purse strings instead of the 
affection of his heart. We are holding fast 
to lies instead of the truth. All this ab¬ 
normal, distorted growth is making us ugly 
and disgusting in almost every feature. In 
us the better America will soon be hardly 
recognizable. 

Never before have we so much needed the 
stalwart teaching of those who have led 
us in our greater past. These still speak to 
us if we would but listen. Benjamin Frank¬ 
lin still says on every page of “Poor Rich¬ 
ard's Almanac” that “We are giving too 
much for our whistle,” and that an old 
coat is often more to be desired than a new 
one. The tall Thomas Jefferson still rises 
above the petty minds about us to say that 
it were better that we had a nation com- 


182 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


posed of two persons, a man and a woman, 
who were truly free, than a nation with 
millions enslaved. The calm voice of 
Robert E. Lee urges upon our hearts that 
he who does his duty with all the strength 
he has may well leave even the matter of 
victory or defeat to Almighty God. During 
these later years, the entire nation has 
claimed to do honor to the name of Abraham 
Lincoln, even while we forget everything 
he stood for, by word and deed, when he 
was among the living. He is much honored 
for making the black man free. We have 
forgotten that great speech of his in which 
he declared that the white man’s freedom 
should be forever guaranteed by free soil as 
a national institution. One Robert E. Lee 
or Abraham Lincoln is worth a great 
city full of crowding and scheming neu¬ 
rotics, treading upon one another’s toes, 
always trading in their eternal souls for a 
chance to get rich and then mostly losing 
out and dying in misery and poverty. 

Present-day America is unworthy of the 
mighty voices which have, in the past, led 


GIANTISM—NATIONAL DISEASE 


183 


her and called her to the leadership of the 
world. Those voices spoke to us when we 
were weak, unformed and poor, yet so rich 
in thought and in the impelling forces of 
our national soul. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


Drifting 

O UR country is not lacking in incurable 
optimists, more commonly known as 
fools. Do we not always hear, they repeat, 
the cry of “Wolf, wolf” by night, and do 
we not always wake up in the morning quite 
safe and sound? I maintain that these 
poor words of mine are no mere warning of 
the wolf. Yesterday he was in close pur¬ 
suit. Today his jaws are closing upon our 
flesh. This outcry wrung from pain and fear 
is due to no imaginary ills. 

We are drifting on every hand. The 
stupendous national problems which beset 
our country internally can not be counted 
off on the fingers of both hands. The ex¬ 
ploitation of our farmers is leaving our 
countryside, the cradle of our national 
character and well-being, depleted of popu¬ 
lation. The Great, War is over, but high 
prices largely remain. We have not even 


DRIFTING 


185 


approached a solution of the problem of 
both safeguarding and properly control¬ 
ling the nation’s greater industries. Labor 
strikes take on the nature of social revolu¬ 
tions. The advocacy of Bolshevism arouses 
mighty crowds to wild enthusiasm. The 
children of the rich and poor alike grow up 
without proper normal training, not to 
speak of spiritual vision. With millions 
of people lacking houses to live in, we find 
ourselves with millions of people unem¬ 
ployed. The problem of the Negro is no 
nearer permanent solution than it was 
forty years ago. I might go on adding to 
this list indefinitely. 

Throughout the length and breadth of 
the land our political life draws ever weaker 
character and poorer mind to political leader¬ 
ship. Strength, purposefulness and astute¬ 
ness, when united together, are used mostly 
to win riches. The weaker brethren are 
more and more being drawn into the public 
service, into the pulpit and into the pro¬ 
fession of teaching. If we really wanted, as 


186 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


in the past, our first-class men to preach to 
us, to teach us, and to direct our govern¬ 
ment, we could easily enough secure their 
services. 

A century ago our national problems were 
exceedingly simple. Their full meaning and 
purport could be quickly explained and 
grasped. Today our economic and social 
problems are infinitely complex. Keeping 
the trains running between New York and 
San Francisco in the year 1921 is a vastly 
different piece of business than keeping the 
stage coaches running between New York 
and Boston in 1787. But the average of 
intelligence and character in both our state 
legislatures and in Congress is far lower than 
it was in 1787. If any be disposed to deny 
this, let him make a comparison between 
the debates of the Federal Convention of 
1787 and the debates of our Federal Con¬ 
gress or the average state legislature of 
to-day. Our political mind, in so far as we 
have any, is still living on the contributions 
of our national past. The last quarter of 


DRIFTING 


187 


the century, especially, has registered fail¬ 
ure with reference to almost every internal 
national problem presented by our time. 

Reflect, for a moment, upon the present 
colossal issues of municipal government. 
A hundred thousand, a million, or five 
millions of persons are forced, for better or 
for worse, for good or for evil, to live together. 
In the recent municipal elections, the great 
city of New York continued the domination 
of Tammany Hall, by a vote of more than 
two to one. The people of Buffalo elected 
a mayor who received a majority of votes 
because he promised upon election to 
throw the Eighteenth Amendment of the 
Federal Constitution into the waste basket. 
Youngstown, Ohio, and Indianapolis, In¬ 
diana, elected “freak’’ mayors, ignorant 
and inexperienced, whose campaigns for 
office both they and those who heard them 
treated as huge practical jokes. The 
great city of Cleveland, Ohio, containing 
nearly a million inhabitants, elected as 
mayor a man who was expelled from the 


188 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


position of Chief of Police because of 
proved irregularities and unfitness to 
hold office. In the midst of our war with 
Germany, Chicago re-elected as mayor a man 
who, throughout the war, was an outspoken 
enemy of his country. In the outright 
venality of every sort, the government of 
the city of Chicago, I am informed, exceeds 
any in the country, even New York. 
Through the South we have not been able 
to secure since the War Between the States, 
as a general thing, that fine type of politi¬ 
cal leader who did such honor to our sec¬ 
tion in the earlier period. Our country is 
not receiving from the South that con¬ 
tribution of leadership which history might 
lead us to expect. The industrial North 
and East should naturally lead the 
nation in the solution of the peculiar 
problems of industrialism. Its remnant 
of American population readily admit their 
utter failure. We of the South can offer 
no help. 

A full generation of so-called reforms 
have ended largely in failure. Even seats 





DRIFTING 


189 


in the United States Senate now go to the 
highest bidder like old furniture at an 
auction sale. The minority which is decent, 
honest, and informed, is giving up the fight. 
The ballot in the hands of ignorant and 
untrained immigrants, of Negroes, and of 
illiterate native whites, has proven to be 
a terrible flare-back, burning our hope of 
progress to ashes. Again force the ballot 
upon the southern Negro and we of the 
South will outdo the North in political 
failure and decay. 

Our greater internal public problems, 
only a few of which I have enumerated at 
the beginning of this article, will ever grow 
more complex in character, more threaten¬ 
ing in aspect. Who can expect men with 
neither work nor property to take an ideal¬ 
istic attitude toward our government and 
the public service? Their vote must ex¬ 
press their meanest immediate interests. 
He who stands in the bread line votes for 
sugar in his coffee and a bigger slice of 
bread. Every unemployed man is a pros- 


190 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


pective Bolshevist. Every illiterate man 
who votes inevitably supports bossism and 
graft rule. With such an electorate how 
can we move safely and intelligently into 
the uncharted and terrifying future? Soon 
we must rule the great industrial organiza¬ 
tions by law, or they will rule us ignoring 
the law. Meanwhile the efficiency of the 
individual wage-worker is decreasing. 
His joy in his work becomes less and less. 
His loyalty to his task has almost struck 
the zero point. Ignore the problem of 
the white small farming class yet a little 
longer, and we shall be driven into farming 
on a great scale, with armies of stolid peas¬ 
ants doing the work. We already have 
agricultural communities where a score or 
a hundred small farms have recently been 
joined together in one estate. What a 
sign post of our times to see the old farm 
house made to serve as the dwellings for 
the immigrant serfs who till the land! 
So “Wealth accumulates and men decay.” 
It is with a shudder that any patriot fore¬ 
sees the time when the countryside, like 
the city, shall have lost its free, independent 


DRIFTING 


191 


population. In our South this small, free, 
white farming class requires special con¬ 
sideration. The danger of its submergence 
and total loss here is greater than in any 
other part of the country. 

As an American, ardent alike for Ameri¬ 
canism and the Americanization of our 
foreign born, I have often enough been ac¬ 
cused of narrowness. I saw others burning 
with enthusiasm over the hope of the 
League of Nations, but I felt my own heart 
chilled by the sense of the shortcomings of 
my own country. With the majority I was 
hesitant. The map of the world today, in 
all its parts, strikes suffering into the heart 
that feels. The blood lines in every direc¬ 
tion indicate that the world as a whole is 
drifting from failure unto failure. Europe 
is struggling helplessly in the midst of 
storm and crying piteously for help which 
never comes. With the German financial 
system broken down, France, denied the 
reparation she expected, is immersed in 
gloomy despair. The smaller nations East 
and Southeast of Germany are collapsing, 


192 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


if not already fallen down, starving and 
diseased; their peoples are becoming every 
day more helpless and hopeless. Italy, 
wasted by the war, is now in the throes of 
civil strife and revolution. Russia, the 
first white nation of the world, continues 
to rot in her insane orgies. With the pass¬ 
ing months and years hope for the early 
salvation of Russia no longer deceives us. 
The battle lines of the Greek army, facing 
the Turks in Asia Minor, are awaiting rein¬ 
forcements and supplies in order to re¬ 
sume the offensive. The four hundred 
millions of China, torn from without for a 
generation, lacerated by revolution and 
civil wars for ten years, have merely proven 
to us their incapacity for self-help. India 
is in revolution and Egypt cut adrift. All 
the world is more decadent today than when 
America entered the war. Again and again 
the nations come to us begging for the strong 
arm of leadership. Again and again they 
go from us, broken hearted and bowed down 
by the weak words of our indecision and 
failure. Yet again they come because else¬ 
where there is no help to ask. 





The Imperial Wizard Kneeling and Kissing the Flag, the only Flag to which a Klansman Kneels. 






DRIFTING 


193 


Such is the world which our times have 
given so largely into our keeping. This 
world demands a leadership such as gave 
our country unity under the Constitution 
of 1787. The giants of those days—a full 
dozen strong, loom large over the succeeding 
generations, and likeTitans of old, their deeds 
illuminate our whole history. Much ac¬ 
cursed as we are today by petty minds and 
selfish hearts in high places, we read the 
history of our heroic period with deepest 
yearning that the mighty dead might rise up 
and speak to us the living words we need 
to hear. We feel so helpless, so lost, and 
gone astray. What mind and character 
we may still have has ceased to function 
normally. From now on we may expect a 
steady drift toward monarchy. In a de¬ 
cadent republic monarchicalism is a nat¬ 
ural growth. First comes a great class of the 
rich on the one hand and a great class of 
poor on the other. Both tend, because of 
their conditions, toward corruption. Both 
corrupt the state. The one will barter the 
ten commandments to keep what it has; 



194 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


the other to get what it wants. For a time 
the proletariat is oppressed with free corn 
and the circus, with organized charities, 
baseball and the movies. No republic can 
long endure on that regimen. Gold has 
already paved the way that leads to the 
United States Senate. All that is needed 
is more gold and the way will be smoothly 
paved to the throne of Caesar or Bel¬ 
shazzar. 

It has always seemed to me that our 
stupendous national sacrifices during the 
War Between the States have never been 
recovered. We lost a million of the sturdiest 
and best men who ever grew to manhood 
in the world. So did that generation lose 
a million homes. We have to-day, instead 
of the ten millions of their descendants, 
equally divided between the city and coun¬ 
try, some twenty millions of unskilled 
foreign workers crowded into the cities 
alone. With the close of the War Between 
the States we ceased, in every section, to 
produce first class national leaders. Today 


DRIFTING 


195 


Charles Murphy has replaced Alexander 
Hamilton. In Illinois, Lincoln the Great 
gives way to William Hale Thompson the 
Little. The passing of Woodrow Wilson 
from the public life leaves the South search¬ 
ing, perhaps in vain, for a leader to present 
to the service of the republic. Into our 
Southern political life, as into that of the 
North a generation ago, there is creeping 
the hireling of special interests. Only the 
ignorant can say that we have not fallen 
on times that are weak and evil and failing 
at every point. 

So we drift—on and on; when to drift at 
all is to drift toward the abyss. With each 
setting sun we become less capable of doing 
well the great task assigned to us. We are 
deceived by the superficial results of me¬ 
chanical progress. Hence we do not care 
to know that each waning summer marks 
a loss for us in all the fundamental de¬ 
terminants of blood, of character, of all the 
elemental forces. These basic elements 
of our peculiar civilization can be main- 



196 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


tained only through the most watchful 
care. A single careless deed done to-day by 
the nation and countless ages must pay an 
ever increasing price of failure and misery. 
Our English-speaking peoples are as a ship 
of democracy struggling in the sea of un¬ 
faith,—an ocean of the world’s failure and 
despair. We are driven before a furious 
gale; great waves wash over our decks. 
We drug ourselves into believing the theory 
that somehow Divine Providence always 
has cared for, and always will care for, the 
children, the lunatics and the United States. 
Of course this theory is trash. The Al¬ 
mighty helps only those that help them¬ 
selves. 

You millions of the middle classes of 
America, living in comfortable ease— 
upon your conscience is the greater burden 
placed! Will you continue to fiddle while 
the common weal is in flames? The future 
throughout your country and the world 
will hold you responsible! “BE NOT 
DECEIVED, GOD IS NOT MOCKED. 



DRIFTING 


197 


WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH, 
THAT ALSO SHALL HE REAP.” 


CHAPTER XIX 


“The Federal Union—It Must Be Pre¬ 
served” 

T HE American government under God 
shall not perish from the earth.” 

In 1830 Andrew Jackson arose before a 
group of distinguished men assembled at a 
dinner in Washington and proposed the 
toast which forms the title of this chapter. 
It seems to me that this expression of the 
iron resolve of the old war-worn hero 
should be placed among those statements 
of our great leaders which have been as 
divine commands in the great crises which 
our country has experienced. Jackson 
loved the Union. In 1830 few people under¬ 
stood those peculiar underlying forces which 
were drawing the Union apart. It is evi¬ 
dent to us now, after studying the history 
of the generation preceding the Civil War, 
that only a Union which exists in the 
minds and hearts of all its citizens can be 
an enduring entity. It may seem rather 



“THE FEDERAL UNION” 


199 


trite to say again that national unity is based 
first of all upon an individual sentiment. 
Even during the War Between the States 
this love of the Union as an ideal never 
ceased to animate the people of the South. 
They sought merely to rebuild the Union 
on a different basis. After the surrender at 
Appomattox the South faithfully accepted 
the old Union under the changed condi¬ 
tions of its re-establishment. Since that 
time their loyalty to the Union, as it is, has 
never been questioned. All must now rec¬ 
ognize that until the great differences which 
severed the Union had been finally settled, 
the Union itself could not be re-established. 

If a nation is to exist at all, certain basic 
principles and forms of procedure must be 
generally accepted by all its citizens. As 
regards these essential things we cannot 
afford to differ at all and yet try to live 
side by side. In English-speaking coun¬ 
tries, for instance, we must needs all accept 
and support the constitutional bill of rights. 
Without freedom of speech, of the press 


200 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


and religious worship, to mention three of 
the more important guaranteed constitu¬ 
tional rights, any English-speaking country 
would very quickly find itself in the throes 
of revolution and civil war. We must 
agree, also, to be subject to the same gen¬ 
eral principles of morality. If a citizen 
argues, for instance, that the crimes of 
robbery and murder are sound and correct 
modes of political procedure, he thereby 
rejects his citizenship. We must all agree 
to live peaceably and lawfully under the 
same constitutional and legal system. 
Finally, to attain nationl unity and national 
peace we must not only accept, but unitedly 
support, with affection and enthusiasm, the 
prevailing system of law and social order. 
That great poet of democracy, Walt Whit¬ 
man, expresses this thought so exquisitely: 

“To hold men together by paper 
and seal, or by compulsion, is no 
account; 

That only holds men together which 
aggregates all in a living principle, as 
the hold of the limbs of the body, or 
the fibres of plants.” 


201 


“THE FEDERAL UNION” 

Our American people, if we are to be per¬ 
fected in unity, must come to be a sort of 
family. 

Differences of personality among in¬ 
dividuals, differences of opinions among 
groups, differences which show themselves 
in a variety of religious beliefs and polit¬ 
ical policies, all these are not only natural 
but necessary to civilization and progress. 
Absolute unity in thought and action can 
be attained only among a tribe of savages. 
The political unity of an absolute monarchy 
is a leftover from savagery. Above all, 
these valuable and desirable differences 
show in all the interesting variations to be 
discovered in our cultural life. In the 
education of children these differences of 
personality should be not only tolerated 
but purposely developed. The growth of 
this quality of personality is one of the most 
precious results of our democratic civiliza¬ 
tion. Yet it can not be too much empha¬ 
sized that all these differences must work 
themselves out and perform all their desir- 


202 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


able functions within the restricted bounds 
of a generally accepted law and custom. 
Otherwise nationality is impossible; and 
this is but another way of saying that hu¬ 
man society is impossible. 

Imagine a group of relatives and friends 
sitting down to break bread together. 
They differ in age, in appearance, in under¬ 
standing, and in almost every purpose of 
life. Some will reject soup, and others fish. 
As the dinner proceeds sharp differences of 
opinion lend interest to the conversation. 
In our present day society any two mem¬ 
bers of this group may well belong to two 
different political parties and two different 
religious organizations. Yet if there is to 
be a true companionship in this place, how 
dominating must be the things that unify! 
This group, to get on well, must speak the 
same language and abide by the same estab¬ 
lished forms of social manners. In all the 
deepest things there must be the same re¬ 
gard for essentials, the same attitude toward 
life. In the mind of each, unity with all the 
others must be truly desired as a spiritual 


“THE FEDERAL UNION” 


203 


attainment. How seldom do we pause to 
reflect upon how many such principles and 
forms are taken for granted, every day and 
all day, in ordinary business and social 
intercourse. If people are to live together 
happily they must not only tolerate one 
another. They must enjoy companion¬ 
ship, one with the other. 

On the same soil you can not have, per¬ 
manently, two systems of law. Two basic 
forms of moral conduct can not function 
side by side. If there are two groups of 
people in any society, one of which totally 
rejects the other, trouble is sure to come. 
Given two groups of people with such a 
gulf fixed between as is never crossed, for 
instance, by intermarriages, and it is time 
to hoist the danger signal. Civil strife 
lurks in the offing. 

That generation of Americans which 
grew up under the shadow of the Civil War, 
and in the terrible period of Reconstruction, 
has had occasion to have burned in its in- 


204 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


most consciousness, as by intense religious 
conviction, this necessity of national unity. 
Such a complete sense of unity, such a 
practice of solidarity, I have visualized for 
my country. It is the disunity of the pres¬ 
ent which, with “Hope deferred, maketh 
the heart sick.” About us on every hand 
are discordant voices, clashing interests, 
screaming recriminations and blazing ha¬ 
treds. Our republic cannot continue unless 
we re-establish, and that very soon, a status 
of civil peace in the minds and hearts of all 
our people. 

Everybody who reads the newspapers 
or talks with his neighbors knows that the 
conflict between labor and capital is drift¬ 
ing us into another civil war. We can al¬ 
ready reach ahead in imagination and fix 
our eyes upon the dreadful moment when 
the forces of class revolution will raise their 
standards and move to the attack. Among 
thousands it is being openly advocated. 
Among great numbers of quieter citizens 
of all classes it is accepted as a sort of grim 


“THE FEDERAL UNION” 


205 


necessity. Men seem always to be ready 
enough to fight. However, a sound na¬ 
tional life can not be maintained by crush¬ 
ing down the masses, any more than freedom 
and progress can be secured for anybody 
through a Bolshevistic revolution. And 
how much more deadly is disunity between 
classes than between sections! 

How difficult it is to make men so desirous 
of peace that they will consecrate their lives 
to secure its conditions! Are there none 
among us so devoted to our Union, so ardent 
in the cause of peace, that they are willing 
to rally around the principles which will 
make both peace and unity possible? I 
steadfastly maintain that, if properly led, 
a majority of Americans are willing to 
think and act in order to forestall anarchy 
and civil war. A vast majority of our farm¬ 
ing people and middle classes are ready to 
demand, as Andrew Jackson demanded in 
1830, that the nation do lawful justice to 
all. We who still constitute the solid body 
of the nation wish to urge upon the wage- 


206 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


working people with all our hearts that 
America and Americanism can solve their 
great problem without rebellion and blood¬ 
shed. And we are just as ready to assure 
those who own and direct capital, even 
those who are so often hated because of 
their great riches, that no penny shall ever 
be taken away from them without due proc¬ 
ess of law. Surely a majority of us have 
not yet lost faith in the very foundations 
of our democratic union. The recent 
stupendous events in revolutionary Europe 
should cause every thoughtful American 
mind to re-examine most carefully the 
principles of our government and of our 
democracy. We stoutly maintain that 
these principles and the constitution based 
upon them furnish a peaceful means, even 
a brotherly means, for the solution of the 
labor problem. But if, under the dangerous 
conditions which impend, our Federal Union 
is to be preserved, our love for it must draw 
us ever closer together in its service. Every 
principle of the bill of rights must be stead¬ 
fastly defended. Embittered hatreds and 


“THE FEDERAL UNION” 


207 


suspicions must be allayed. The nation 
as a whole must be persuaded to take coun¬ 
sel in a quiet way. To those who shriek 
out upon us that “Might makes right,” 
and that “Government is founded upon 
power and wealth alone,” we must be able 
to reply that our Constitution and laws are 
still vitalized bv the love of our American 
hearts, and by our willingness to sacrifice 
self for the sacred things of the Union. 
May we not still reply, also, that freedom 
is only curtailment of power—power to 
rule over others—and that true freedom 
can be experienced only in a nation whose 
citizens highly resolve to protect the free¬ 
dom, the rights and interests of all. 

Both plutocracy and Bolshevism are 
new forms of tyranny. Neither have, as 
yet, run their course. None can refuse to 
take note that during the last decade some 
of our rich, as for instance, Mr. Henry Ford, 
have begun to learn the lesson of the 
stewardship of wealth. With what pride 
and pleasure we have observed, too, that 



208 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


organized labor in America has rejected 
Bolshevism and declared ardently and al¬ 
most unanimously for purely democratic 
methods of action. It is not among the 
twenty per cent who are organized; it is 
among the eighty per cent of our workers 
who have not the capacity to organize, or 
who are denied the right to organize, that 
Bolshevism is raising its ugly head and 
weaning the workers away from democracy 
and from the love and service of their coun¬ 
try. If our Union is to be preserved in our 
day, it must win a new hold upon the affec¬ 
tions of this vast number of our people, 
native-born and foreign alike. Among 
them all its interests must be made the sub¬ 
ject of constant thought and conversation. 
All must learn that no man who hates his 
neighbor can sit down in peace under his 
own vine and fig tree. So, to this, our altar 
of unity, we who labor for social peace must 
bring in absolute sacrifice the work of our 
hands and all the cultural results of our 
civilization. Only thus shall we be enabled 
to lead the warring classes back to Ameri- 






Consecration to the Flag 














209 


“THE FEDERAL UNION” 

canism. The Union, it it is to be preserved 
from social disintegration, must be estab¬ 
lished upon character as well as upon a 
common material interest. 

The time has fully come tor all Americans 
to reason together and finally think this 
thing through. Who among us can say 
that he knows exactly what to do? But 
this we all can say: That if our people 
approach this whole matter in the attitude 
of affection, one for the other, if we consider 
this issue as ardent patriots and sincere 
Christians, then we are sure to discover, 
presently, the straight way in which all can 
walk together in unity and fellowship. 

The Ku Klux Klan is composed, I trust, 
of men who will face this crucial issue with 
relentless firmness. We shall say to Ameri¬ 
cans of all classes who now prepare their 
minds for civil war that they must and 
shall make peace. We do not propose, as 
the years pass, to wait and wait and drift 
and drift. Let none mistake our purpose. 


210 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


Civil war is the most terrible curse a nation 
can suffer. We do not propose to look idly 
upon the mischief of others until it rages all 
about us. We shall prevent war by plan¬ 
ning for peace, by preparing for peace, and 
by knowing in our inmost hearts that peace 
can be maintained. The way to the peace 
we demand lies through justice, righteous¬ 
ness and affection. “The Federal Union, 
it must be preserved.” 

National unity, as we here understand 
it, is more than a means to an end. Na¬ 
tional unity is an ever enlarging result. 
It is the loftier and worthier goal. In the 
full joy of its realization the individual soul 
is enriched and finally saved. Thus is 
patriotism made to share in the spiritual 
values of religion. So the individual losing 
self, shall again find himself in the service 
of his fellowmen. 

Looking back beyond the temporary 
issues of the War Between the States we 
can see, rising in clear outline against the 
times in which he lived, the tall spare form 


“THE FEDERAL UNION” 


211 


of “Old Hickory/’ There rung through his 
brave utterance both resolution of will and 
high purpose of policy. So were his faith 
and his hope maintained. Today, amid the 
clamor and disunity of our times, his mem¬ 
ory again urges upon the troubled hearts 
of our people this great word of a day that 
is done, that it may again be made flesh 
and dwell among us. 


CHAPTER XX 


Our Country's Part Among the Nations 

P RECEDING chapters have indicated 
our present national unfitness in so 
many things concerning our domestic public 
life. Yet, until recently, we were enabled 
to concentrate what public mind and spirit 
we had upon such problems as arose among 
ourselves from the conditions of our in¬ 
ternal growth. Now, being weak, hesi¬ 
tant, and our wills quite unformed, we are 
suddenly hurled into the very center of 
the international whirlpool. In the prepara¬ 
tion for and in the execution of our part in 
the Great War, we were, no doubt, quite 
magnificent. But no one ever doubted our 
ability to fight. It is in the execution of the 
greater tasks of peace’ that we falter and 
fail. 

With the close of the war there was pre¬ 
sented to us, in the urge to world leader¬ 
ship, the most difficult and dangerous prob- 


OUR COUNTRY’S PART 


213 


lem of all. Here, again, we were offered no 
alternative. We must go. We must help to 
“settle order once again.” We drew back 
from Paris, only to reassemble the nations 
at Washington. 

Two opposite opinions have settled in 
the minds of the majority of Americans 
with reference to the subject matter of 
this chapter. One would have us move far 
out and lose ourselves in a mad mixing 
world. The other would withdraw us from 
the world utterly and hide us like a“hermit 
crab” in any rotting shell we find. I shall 
here show that one of these policies is im¬ 
possible to execute. 1 shall prove, also, 
that the other, if fully carried out, would 
destroy us as a people. Between the two, 
surely, there lies a way in which our ship 
may move more safely towards its appoint¬ 
ed haven. 

Changed international relationships are 
largely the result of new forces, physical 
forces, in the economic and social life of the 


214 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


world. These forces were drawing and push¬ 
ing all the nations of the world very close 
together. The first wireless message has 
only recently been sent entirely around the 
world. Commercial aviation, already widely 
in vogue upon land, will presently span the 
Atlantic and then the Pacific. The com¬ 
mercial and financial dependence of each 
modernized country upon the other is too 
commonly realized to need much emphasis 
here. If Europe does not buy cotton, the 
Oklahoma farmer can not pay his taxes or 
his grocery bill. If the Germans can not 
borrow money in New York and London, 
they can not buy raw material to work 
upon; hence, France, Belgium and Italy, 
getting no reparations, will not be able to 
pay their American creditors. So runs the 
system into every counting house, factory 
and cow stable of the civilized world. Rail¬ 
way lines now penetrate the deserts of 
Asia and the jungles of Africa. Every¬ 
where the half-naked savage is trained to 
work at strangely modern tasks. So is 


OUR COUNTRY’S PART 


215 


his labor interwoven by the machine proc¬ 
ess into our gigantic fabric of international 
industrialism. All the world unites be¬ 
cause it is impossible to any longer stay 
divided. He who does not understand these 
things of the world’s work can not begin 
to think intelligently concerning inter¬ 
national relationship. 

Our large American part in the life of 
the world is, and is to be, determined by a 
number of factors. These include our 
wealth, our comparative numbers, our nation¬ 
al state of mind, and the place we hold in 
the opinions of other peoples. We are 
seven per cent of the world’s population and 
sixteen per cent of the world’s white popu¬ 
lation. At the table of the great Inter¬ 
national Disarmament Conference at 
Washington we sat with Britain, 
France, Italy, and Japan. Our wealth is 
probably greater than that of all these 
combined, including the white colonies of 
the British Empire. In power to make war 
we undoubtedly stand alone. These ele- 


216 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


ments of physical greatness indicate our 
natural part in the reorganization of the 
shattered world. We can not leave the world 
to its ways and build a Chinese wall around 
America; nor would we if we could. No won¬ 
der our old-fashioned American citizen was 
deeply worried in the year of 1920. 
“Whither,” he asked, and “how far are we 
going?” So he decided to pause and wait 
awhile. Deep within the national mind 
was the terrible knowledge that, with our 
feet entering strange and devious ways, our 
lamp was untrimmed. 

We can not accept an internationalism that 
would compromise the immigration issue 
either in the East or West. We can not 
serve Japan by permitting her to annex 
California as she has already annexed 
Hawaii. We can not save the world by 
seeking first our own dissolution. An inter¬ 
national market for money and goods is 
one thing. A free international market for 
wage-laborers is quite another. If we are 
to undertake our international task, we 


OUR COUNTRY’S PART 


217 


must ever more jealously guard the strength 
which is ours by inheritance. Let us cleave 
even more firmly to those things of mind 
and character that have created us a nation. 
As a unified and democratic people, as a 
successful, happy and educated people, we 
can no doubt play a leading part in organ¬ 
izing the world for better things. All the 
world cries out for this leadership of Ameri¬ 
ca. But we are as yet unfit to lead. The 
nations, which are sinking, stretch out 
their hands to lay hold of ours, but we our¬ 
selves are falling into the pit. One who 
reaches down his hand to rescue a man 
falling into Niagara’s current must first be 
sure of his own footing. If we are to save 
others we must begin by first saving our¬ 
selves. It is impossible to resist the in¬ 
fluences that make for internationalism. 
But it is possible, it is absolutely necessary, 
to save and make perfect our nationalism 
upon which any useful internationalism 
must be based. To speak of international¬ 
ism as taking the place of nationalism is to 
deny the very meaning of the word from the 


i 


218 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


start. The separate nation, in its world 
relationships, may be compared to a sepa¬ 
rate home in a community. The citizen 
joins with his neighbors to construct a road, 
to build a village school, to maintain a 
police and fire service. But the community 
effort is not undertaken for the purpose of 
dissolving and destroying the home. Just the 
contrary. The community protects and 
serves the home. It accomplishes what the 
single can not undertake. 

Eventually there will come, if we learn 
to lead, a great world community. It will 
come slowly, growing through the centuries. 
Our own country, ever more positive of 
her individuality, of the deeper things of 
her own personality, of the true worth of 
her inmost soul, and with a realizing sense 
of the value she can so contribute, may yet 
aspire to the privilege and the honor of 
that world leadership which will make for 
the peace, unity and well-being of all. 


CHAPTER XXI 


We English-Speaking People Must 
Stand Together 

H ere, too, a choice is not permitted 
us. The desperate condition of the 
world is forcing our minds and hearts. The 
demand is given to us who speak English: 
“CO-OPERATE, OR PERISH WITH A 
PERISHING WORLD.” 

This broken world can not be put upon 
the path of peace and prosperity without 
the most careful and courageous leader¬ 
ship. Modern industrial and commercial 
conditions, in a word, the machine process, 
has thrown all the nations of the world 
together. If we can not separate ourselves 
from the other nations, if all the world must 
eventually march in the same direction, the 
only practical question relates to the direc¬ 
tion of the march. Are we to be saved to¬ 
gether, or are we going to fall together into 
the pit of a new sequence of the Dark Ages? 


220 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


The great masses of the colored races, 
mostly unfitted for self rule, must be pro¬ 
tected, civilized, educated, and led onward 
and upward toward the best that they can 
do. On the other hand lies the dread alter¬ 
native of a military imperium which might 
eventually organize the whole of China and 
India. If we do not organize the world 
for peace, it is not impossible to conceive 
that twenty-five years of astute propaganda 
might win all these seven hundred and fifty 
millions to the militaristic leadership of Ja¬ 
pan. A great Indian nationalist leader recent¬ 
ly said that no one fact had so aroused and 
encouraged the spirit of India as the present 
brilliant role of the Japanese nation. 
Such a pan-Asiatic movement might very 
likely draw Russia, Germany and several 
other European nations into a new and 
terrible alliance. The poor and the deject¬ 
ed always seem to find cause enough to 
pick a quarrel with the rich and the power¬ 
ful. I repeat, if the English-speaking 
people will not undertake together the task 
of giving ordered progress and freedom to 


WE MUST STAND TOGETHER 


221 


the world, upon what nation or nations is 
the duty to devolve? We have rejected, 
rightly or wrongly, the League of Nations. 
What next? 

In this connection the happy solution of 
the age-worn Irish question makes straight 
the way. While the Irish in the home-land 
were in rebellion against Britain, the po¬ 
litical waters of every English-speaking 
country in the world were made muddy. 
Peace in Ireland makes our task of co¬ 
partnership with the British Empire easier 
and simpler. Indeed, directly after the 
signatures were attached to the British 
treaty of peace with Ireland, a distinguish¬ 
ed Irish leader remarked that he hoped to 
see America cooperate with all the other 
English-speaking people who are united 
through the British Empire. 

Let us glance briefly at some essential con¬ 
clusions to which the reduction of naval 
armaments inevitably leads. The American 
and the British navies are to be made 


222 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


about equal. In ten years time an almost 
perfect equality will be secured. These two 
navies, taken together, will of course domi¬ 
nate the seven oceans. The only naval 
power which will remotely compare to 
either is that of Japan. Because of our 
wealth and population, also because of our 
industries, production and commerce, the 
United States and the British will have no 
immediate rivals. Together, we can de¬ 
clare the world’s peace. Together, we can 
give the world a decent measure of order. 
We include, of course, the practically in¬ 
dependent and rapidly growing nations of 
Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South 
Africa. It will be readily seen how much 
greater is our power, a united power, for good 
than any other possible combination of 
nations in the world. Here, tossed about in 
a sea of color, lies the white man’s hope. 
Here, too, is large hope for all the world. 
Under the world peace we can establish the 
forces that make for international justice 
which will at last be given a chance to func¬ 
tion; while under the threat of’ war every sort 


WE MUSI' STAND TOGETHER 


223 


of inhuman and barbaric force will win its 
way. Given an assured peace and better 
minds and gentler hearts among our English- 
speaking people will never be silenced. They 
will triumph in our own countries first. 
They will save the world as a matter of 
course. On the other hand, world anarchy 
and world war will always submerge every 
liberal voice and every progressive policy 
among all nations, ourselves included. 

We need no formal alliance with the 
British to bring these things to pass. The 
alliance of the American with the British 
people is formed by all the qualities we 
have in common. These are already more 
powerful than any document. The theory 
that competition for the world’s trade 
makes copartnership in everything and 
anything impossible for us is a piece of 
ignorant nonsense. All our better hu¬ 
manity is crying out the command that 
trade keep to its rightful place in human 
affairs. If this Anglo-American under¬ 
standing could have been possible ten 


224 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


years ago there would have been no World 
War. At that time we in America were not 
ready for co-operation. If we are not en¬ 
tirely ready for it today, then under the 
Providence of Almighty God, and being re¬ 
sponsible to Him alone, those of us who 
see the light must make all ready for it. 

With every forward step we try to take 
toward the peace and the salvation of the 
world, we shall find, at first, blocking our 
way and attempting to push us back, our 
great foreign cities. The war, in so far as 
we Americans ourselves are concerned, 
has not liberated us from this tyranny of 
the foreign vote. It is, in large part, still 
mobilized on the wrong side of almost 
every public question we can think of. 
However, we may now expect this in¬ 
fluence to slowly give way to better knowl¬ 
edge and wiser counsels. With the Irish 
question finally settled, our Irish fellow- 
citizens here will have no further occasion 
to oppose the British at every step. Our 
German voters, too, may soon come to 





God is our Refuge and Strength 












WE MUST STAND TOGETHER 


225 


learn that Germany cannot be saved if 
the world be lost. If we American-born 
citizens can only attain sufficient unity to 
once for all ignore the foreign vote, and 
rule ourselves intelligently, we shall soon 
discover that vote has ceased to be a 
danger. But it will not cease to curse 
America for fifty years if it is not met 
with the firmness of a united American will. 
Let us draw a line about the foreign sec¬ 
tions and about the hyphenated votes, 
and declare our absolute independence of 
them. During the war this foreign vote 
was silenced and nullified. So it will be 
again as soon as we speak our national 
mind with certainty of purpose. 

In perfect harmony with the British 
people, we are now seeking and securing 
naval disarmament. Having limited and 
equalized our power for defense, it is abso¬ 
lutely essential that we stand together to 
prevent the building, among possible ene¬ 
mies, of dangerous armaments on sea or 
land. No doubt Japan will, from this time 


226 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


on, carefully heed the united demand of 
our two English-speaking peoples. The 
first imperative duty that we must ac¬ 
complish together concerns the protection of 
China from the lusts of the exploiter. The 
independence of the Chinese nation must 
be guaranteed. Her unity must be re¬ 
established. Her resources must be pro¬ 
tected from the greedy ones among our 
own citizens who would take from the 
Chinese people the resources they so much 
need for their future. Today China can 
not protect herself. It is incumbent upon 
us to afford her the fullest measure of pro¬ 
tection. The gratitude and esteem our 
children will receive from the Chinese 
nation will be in the future the strongest 
and surest of all the guarantees of world 
peace. 

We in America are as much interested 
in the care and progress of the African 
peoples as are the British. Why should 
we not share in this responsibility? What 
a boon to the future of those backward 


WE MUST STAND TOGETHER 


227 


black people of Africa, should they find 
themselves more largely united through 
the more general teaching of the English 
language! More and more will such of 
our American Negroes as are unhappy here, 
find a place of refuge in their native land 
of Africa. We should be serving the high¬ 
est purposes in a number of ways were we 
to purchase the Congo Free State from Bel¬ 
gium and the Portuguese colonies in the 
Southern part of the continent. Side by 
side with the British Empire we could 
help in administering the affairs of those 
barbaric peoples in their own interest. 
The third international plague spot is the 
Near East. With the heavy tyranny of 
the Sultan removed, the conglomeration 
of broken and unhappy peoples who com¬ 
posed his subject population have been 
freed. Today they fight and fester like 
vermin stifled and starving in a dark 
place. It seemed to many Americans that, 
after the war, supervision of these Chris¬ 
tian peoples was our particular duty. 


228 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


Why should we, speaking the language 
of the mighty dead, who gave command in 
the English tongue, be so fearful of sharing 
each other’s purposes and each other’s tasks? 
We are what we are; and it so happens that 
we are forced by circumstances to guide the 
world. Let us lead wisely and well, win¬ 
ning for our children gratitude and esteem. 
Let us have done with all this sickening 
pose of Pecksniff and Uriah Heap, and do 
the great deeds to which our times call us 
as Cromwell and Washington would have 
done! 

We need world vision to-day. “Without 
vision the people perish.” But we need 
more than vision. We require great, prac¬ 
tical, general policies of world reorganiza¬ 
tion; and the veritable cornerstone of that 
policy is this mighty English-speaking co¬ 
partnership. This saving fellowship we 
Klansmen propose to advance by every 
means in our power. The common lan¬ 
guage through which the whole world 
must ultimately find communion is the 


i 


WE MUST STAND TOGETHER 


229 


English language. This is evident to any¬ 
body who even casually surveys the lin¬ 
guistic map of the world. North America, 
India, Australia, more than half of Africa 
—such is the future empire of Shake¬ 
speare and Milton and Lowell and Poe. 
Beside all the various national languages 
and local dialects, our language will be 
used as a means of universal conversation. 
So shall our every word, for good or for 
ill, be a word spoken in authority to the 
whole world. 



CHAPTER XXII 


The Nemesis of Immigration 

O UR American civilization has received 
during these three hundred years two 
crushing blows. So staggering have been 
these onslaughts that it is still doubtful 
whether or not we can recover and go on as 
a democratic people. On both occasions 
the blows have come primarily from a 
relatively small group of profiteers. During 
the first two hundred years of our history 
the African slave traders of old England 
and New England traded their vile cargoes 
of rum for the black man, and sold him 
throughout the Americas. So they ac¬ 
cursed half our country with slavery. To¬ 
day their deeds remain in the form of a 
large population of black people, which, 
like a millstone about its neck, still drags 
upon every natural aspiration of the South¬ 
land. 

The desire for cheap labor was not fully 
satiated through the importation of the 


THE NEMESIS OF IMMIGRATION 


231 


African slave. The coming of modern 
industrialism gave it a new turn. Our 
American system of industrialism has been 
based, from the first, largely upon a Euro¬ 
pean system of labor. Without the slightest 
question as to their unfitness to take part 
in our social life, or our political democracy, 
without thought of anything in the world 
but securing much labor for little money, 
our employing classes have, until very re¬ 
cently, persuaded the nation to give them 
a free hand in their immigration policy. 
What the importation of the black man did 
to the South in accursing our history for 
centuries, immigration has done and is still 
doing to the industrial districts of the North 
and West. Having advanced far beyond 
Europe in the development of a democratic 
civilization, we have now again, deliber¬ 
ately, turned back upon our past and pre¬ 
vented the social, intellectual and political 
progress of our country by instituting the 
conditions of a degrading poverty, illiteracy, 
overcrowding, slums, and mediaeval re¬ 
ligious worship. The gang rule and the 


232 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


boss rule of our cities are simply a return 
to monarchical forms without the decencies 
of government and the refinements of 
society which an hereditary monarch pro¬ 
vides. All this we have gotten together 
with the riches we so much craved. We 
have amassed our wealth only to realize, 
perhaps too late, that our very food and 
drink are ashes and vinegar. 

There have come into America during the 
last fifty years great hordes of immigrants. 
The tide reached its height in the fiscal 
year ending June 30, 1914, when it totalled 
1,320,000. From Europe there came dur¬ 
ing the fiscal year ending June 30, 1921, 
805,000. With our cities swarming with 
millions of unemployed, congress was im¬ 
pelled at the end of the last fiscal year to 
pass the three per cent law. This law per¬ 
mits, annually, immigrants to come from 
each European nation to the extent of 
three per cent of their peoples already here 
in 1910. That is, if 100,000 Rumanians 
were settled among us in 1910, 3,000 a year 


THE NEMESIS OF IMMIGRATION 


233 


are now permitted to come. This law is 
difficult to enforce. Within an hour I have 
read in the day’s news that 1,100 immi¬ 
grants, mostly from Hungary and Armenia, 
brought over by the greedy shipping com¬ 
panies in excess of the three per cent quota 
of those nations, are to be admitted. This 
is done as a Christmas gift to these unfor¬ 
tunate people. Once arrived at our ports, 
who can have the heart to return these un¬ 
fortunates to Europe. No doubt this act 
of charity will be repeated again and again. 

If we permit this three per cent law to be 
continued during a time of economic stress 
and unemployment, we may expect the 
profiteers, and cheap labor, advocates gen¬ 
erally, to come upon us with their demand 
of unrestricted immigration as soon as times 
are better and workers are more in demand. 
Of course, as might be expected, these for¬ 
eign born already here are most zealous in 
their advocacy of unrestricted immigra¬ 
tion. In the first place they wish to bring 
over their relatives and friends. Then, too, 


234 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


the foreign born wrongly interprets all op¬ 
position to unlimited immigration as being 
a base imputation against his particular peo¬ 
ple. The thoughtless and unpatriotic appeal 
of all these groups is usually made upon the 
basis of a sentimentalism. “Is America not 
the haven of refuge for the oppressed?” 
they ask. In the same manner was the 
trade in African Negroes defended three 
hundred years ago. The blacks were being 
brought over, it was said, “in order to 
Christianize them.” If half of them died 
on the way and were thrown overboard to 
feed the sharks, as often happened, still 
our intentions were said to be Christian. 
This sickly, and ofttimes affected, sentimen¬ 
talism is one of the most disgusting features 
of both the criminal profiteering of the few, 
and of the criminal carelessness of the many 
among our people. 

Reflect for a moment upon the fact that 
there are at least one hundred millions of 
poor in Europe, who would come to America 
now if they could. They await only ship 


THE NEMESIS OF IMMIGRATION 


235 


space and money to pay for their passage. 
To bring over one million this year is always 
to prepare the way for two millions next 
year. Each incoming crowd soon invites 
and pays the way for a greater host of rela¬ 
tives and friends. 

This importation of the poor and desti¬ 
tute does not much benefit European coun¬ 
tries, if indeed it helps them at all. A coun¬ 
try, which, like Italy or Belgium, is pri¬ 
marily industrial in character, has long since 
reached its limit of population. Remove a 
million Belgians or a million Italians to 
America, and their places are at once re¬ 
filled by a million more births at home. 
Hence the creation of Italian or Belgian 
slums in Boston, Pittsburgh and Chicago 
does not ultimately decrease the size of the 
slums in Brussels or Naples. Nor does the 
overflowing tide help the home country 
where, as from Poland or Hungary, the 
emigrants are largely peasants. The land 
of Poland and Hungary is held in large 
estates. Every peasant who deserts the 


236 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


soil of Europe to fester in our cities merely 
postpones the change in the land system 
which denies him opportunity in his own 
country. Furthermore, in Poland, Hun¬ 
gary, Rumania, etc., this peasant is now 
needed more than ever before to raise food 
crops. He leaves his country because con¬ 
ditions are bad. These evil conditions are 
due, in part, to the aftermath of war. But 
this is only secondary. The primary cause 
of poverty among the peasants of Southern 
and Eastern Europe has been large holdings 
of land and conditions of practical serfdom, 
but, above all, primitive and backward 
means of production. Instead of plowing 
his land with a plow, this backward peasant 
turns it up with a hoe three times the weight 
and with only half the cutting edge of an 
American garden hoe. Instead of reaping 
his grain with a reaper, the Polish or Rus¬ 
sian peasant reaps with a scythe of about 
the size, weight and shape of an American 
fence rail. So, to compensate for his own 
ignorance, backwardness, and the crude 
mediaevalism of his whole environment, 


THE NEMESIS OF IMMIGRATION 


237 


this peasant escapes responsibility by rush¬ 
ing to the United States. His case is ex¬ 
actly the same as that of the city wastrel 
from Belgium or Italy. In leaving his own 
country he does not help it in the least. 
In coming to America he drags us down to 
the pit of Hell. 

As regards the immigration from Japan, 
the West Indies, and Mexico, the condi¬ 
tions are only exaggerated. They are ex¬ 
aggerated by greater differences in race and 
by the wider gulf which separates our eco¬ 
nomic conditions from theirs. There are 
tens of millions of people in India who never 
know from one year’s end to another what 
it means to have enough to eat. One good 
American dollar will outfit their wardrobe 
for twelve months. Throw these millions 
into the industrial life of America, and in 
twenty years’ time their place in India will 
be taken by as many millions more, just as 
wretched, just as absolutely hopeless as the 
millions who are begging, starving and 
dying to-day. Here is a place where senti- 


238 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


mentalisms are only trash. A sentimental 
attitude by an American toward this prob¬ 
lem is a criminal attitude. It is a sort of 
criminal insanity which makes for suicide. 
If the suicidal intent concerned only the 
individual, we should not worry nearly so 
much. But it is our country which is com¬ 
mitting suicide. 

The problem may be simplified by a com¬ 
parison. Let us picture our sentimentalist 
as possessed of an American family of wife 
and three children living in an eight room 
house. Will this average citizen welcome 
the arriving immigrants into his own house 
to the extent of five per room? If he lives 
in Texas, will he fill his home with Mexican 
peons; if in California, with Japanese and 
Hindoos; if in New York, with Sicilians 
or Turks ? All that I ask is that he be fully 
consistent. If the sentimentalist is willing 
to prevent his own children from having 
homes in America in order to provide homes 
for the Japanese; if he is willing to prevent 
his American neighbors from having chil- 


THE NEMESIS OF IMMIGRATION 


239 


dren in order to make way for the children 
of the Japanese of tomorrow—then he 
ought to be willing to open wide the door 
of his own house in order to provide for the 
destitute immigrant. 

There is something quite terrible in the 
stern fact that this country will belong to 
the people who multiply most rapidly. 
The imbeciles and the other feeble-minded, 
if permitted to do so, multiply much more 
rapidly than normal persons. Suppose 
that we permit this class to multiply at will 
and carefully preserve its progeny from dis¬ 
ease and other causes of a high mortality. 
In that case we can easily calculate the 
time when the feeble-minded and insane 
will number a majority of our population. 
Among the competing races in America the 
birth-rate is the ultimate victor. The Ger¬ 
man and the Irish among us outbreed the 
original Americans. The French-Cana- 
dians and the Poles outbreed the Germans 
and the Irish. The Negroes and the Jap¬ 
anese outbreed all the whites. Return to 


240 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


the liberal immigration policy of five years 
ago and we shall become a conglomeration 
out of which it will be impossible to build a 
nation. Under such conditions almost no 
sound reform policies, no national progress¬ 
ive movement of any sort, can be success¬ 
fully advocated and executed. Stop immi¬ 
gration and a homogeneous English-speak¬ 
ing nation will again be developed. Such a 
nation will solve every economic and social 
problem as it arrives. Such a nation will 
develop according to our Anglo-Saxon meth¬ 
ods of free speech, free press, democratic 
methods and popular respect for the law. 
We are dealing here with the most crucial 
and fundamental issue of our generation. 

The time has come to brand every advo¬ 
cate of continued immigration as the out¬ 
right enemy of this country and of our 
American civilization. We are already two 
generations late in waking up to this matter. 
We are on the very brink of the pit, and if 
we are to act at all, we must act in unity 
and at once. Eventually, after our present 




Klonklave” where One Thousand “Aliens ” were “Naturalized” and Became Citizen 

of The Invisible^ Empire. 






















THE NEMESIS OF IMMIGRATION 


241 


foreign element has been Americanized and 
absorbed as best it may be we might permit 
again a small amount of carefully selected 
immigration annually. But even that would 
be a mistake. Future Americans should 
be born and reared in America. Again and 
again let me urge that I am not claiming 
that Americans are inherently superior to 
other peoples. We have a peculiar civiliza¬ 
tion to guard and to guide. The tendency 
in our industrial regime is always for the 
weaker, the more humble, the more serf¬ 
like peoples to undermine the sturdier native 
whose standard of living spells his destruc¬ 
tion. The lower standard of living which 
the immigrant willingly accepts, at least at 
first, is his essential curse. Admitting 
swarms of low standard Europeans in order 
to “bring American working people to 
reason” as regards their wages and con¬ 
ditions is a piece of ignorant folly. In 
the end this always increases, instead of 
decreases, our labor difficulties. 

As I have already stated, our American 
labor problem can not be solved by break- 


242 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


ing down the American standard of living 
and the American spirit among American 
born working men. Our labor problem 
can be solved only by winning the employers 
and workers alike to accept a common policy 
of justice and Americanism. The view that 
there is ever “more work in America than 
we can do ourselves” is the falsest of false 
economic theories. Why should we try to 
exploit our resources or develop new proj¬ 
ects of any sort at the crazy and destructive 
rate of speed which has marked our indus¬ 
trialism during the past generation? Just 
the contrary is the correct policy. The un¬ 
skilled labor of America must be done by 
Americans. A dozen of our presidents have 
wielded the axe and guided the plow. The 
very foundation of our country is a sturdy, 
intelligent, characterful and self-respecting 
working class, who do not at all crave to be 
parsons and college professors. Better build 
fewer miles of highway or dig less coal than 
destroy our civilization by the admixture of 
unsuitable and unworthy elements. There 
is an old story of a farmer who burned down 


THE NEMESIS OF IMMIGRATION 


243 


his barn in order to get rid of the rats. Here 
we have a case of burning down one’s house 
in order to settle an argument as to who is 
going to wash the dishes. Right here ap¬ 
pears what may be our supreme test in the 
building of a great nation, in the conserva¬ 
tion of our democratic civilization. Are 
we Americans ready and willing to eat our 
bread by the sweat of our brow? If we are, 
we shall live and prosper as a people. If we 
are not, if we crave the importation of an 
ever larger servile class, then we shall per¬ 
ish, and we shall deserve to perish. Democ¬ 
racy is impossible in the presence of a class 
which holds common labor in disesteem. 
On the other hand, no idle aristocratic class 
exists in all the world, that the mills of the 
gods will not grind to dust and oblivion in 

the end. 

/ 

Another aspect of European emigration 
deserves especial comment. Let us take 
for granted that it is desirable for a certain 
number of Europeans to emigrate from their 
various home lands. Why do they not go 


244 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


to South America, where millions of square 
miles are as yet untilled and unbroken, and 
where raw materials in countless amounts 
await the tools and the initiative of the 
worker? Or, why does not the European 
emigrant go to East Africa, where a fair and 
fruitful land, resembling California, is open 
to settlement by white men? Australia, 
with three millions of square miles, has a 
population of only six millions. She can 
take millions of immigrants, and provide 
lands and plenty. 

The answer is simplicity itself, the mass 
of European wage workers and peasants 
today do not wish to become pioneers. 
Those who are physically, mentally and 
morally capable of becoming independent 
and successful farmers no longer emigrate. 
They stay at home and improve their con¬ 
ditions by instituting modern methods, 
as in Germany, Ireland, and Scandinavia. 
They know that we have no longer free 
lands for them. The present European 
emigrant is one who wishes to become a city 


THE NEMESIS OF IMMIGRATION 


245 


wage-worker or petty trader. Here in 
America considerable numbers have at¬ 
tained great wealth. It is this story of the 
poor emigrant boy who acquires millions 
of money and perhaps political distinction 
which troubles the mind and disturbs the 
sleep of the unemployed European wage 
worker, the peddler and the landless peasant. 
Stop European emigration to the United 
States and within ten years South America, 
Africa and Australia will begin to receive 
such emigrants as they need for their nat¬ 
ural and rightful development. But those 
who emigrate from Europe to the great open 
spaces of the world will be forced to become 
farmers, foresters and miners, producing 
the solid wealth which all the world needs. 

One further word. We shall presently 
come again upon a period of prosperity. 
It will be limited by world conditions, prob¬ 
ably, to a few months, at the most to a year 
or two. During this period an enormous 
propaganda for unlimited immigration will 
be again financed by the profiteers and sup- 


246 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


ported by the feeble minded and weeping 
sentimentalists. At that time the intelli¬ 
gent and patriotic portion of our citizen¬ 
ship must be especially alert and active. 
We must so organize our working forces 
that great numbers can readily be shifted 
from city factories to the harvest fields and 
back again. Certain seasonable trades and 
outdoor construction work can be made to 
supplement one another, so that the workers 
will not be forced out of employment at any 
season of the year. To a man of the breadth 
and experience of, for instance, Mr. Ford, 
the execution of such a plan would be sim¬ 
plicity itself. We Americans can and must 
solve these peculiar industrial problems on 
the basis of a slowly increasing native 
population. 

I realize fully that to consummate so 
great a reform as the permanent stopping 
of immigration requires the setting in mo¬ 
tion of larger forces than the Klan can com¬ 
mand. To this end every American must 
function through his political party, his 


THE NEMESIS OF IMMIGRATION 


247 


fraternal order, his business associates or 
labor union, and his church. All the argu¬ 
ment is on one side. What we require is 
action, and we Klansmen propose to have 
it without further dilly-dallying and com¬ 
promise. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


The Problem of Restricting the 

Suffrage 

D URING nearly the whole of the nine¬ 
teenth century our American people 
played up hill and down dale with a very 
dangerous political doctrine. I refer to the 
theory of unrestricted suffrage. Probably 
a majority of our people actually came to 
believe that because a man (or a woman) 
had arrived at the age of twenty-one, that 
was reason enough for granting him the 
right to vote. This individual might be 
illiterate. He might be mentally undevel¬ 
oped, perhaps an imbecile. If our imagi¬ 
nary voter were deaf, dumb and blind, 
besides being halt, he could still be carried 
to the polls and his vote registered and 
counted. 

Only recently have any considerable 
number of our people come to take a prac¬ 
tical view of this thing. At last we are 


RESTRICTING THE SUFFRAGE 


249 


beginning to see that this, like any other 
good principle of life, may be driven to 
excess. One may work too hard or think 
too much. Even the most exalted virtues 
may be overdone. So it is with the prin¬ 
ciples of democracy. Elaving succeeded 
with a large measure of democracy, by 
the time our government was put into 
operation, we did not lack those who were 
prepared to see it carried to fanatical and 
dangerous extremes. So the spoils system 
has been long defended as being a necessary 
attribute of democracy. Politicians dis¬ 
covered that votes might be secured through 
disclaiming all breeding, culture, and even 
denouncing efficiency in office. Instead of 
trying to make of our democratic system a 
sound and reasonable way of conducting 
public business, our people fell to advocat¬ 
ing certain democratic political and social 
theories with a sort of religious frenzy. 

So it was with universal suffrage. A 
corrupt government at Washington would 
never have been permitted to enfranchise 


250 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


the Negroes directly after their emancipa¬ 
tion had it not been for the wide acceptance 
among our people of this false theory of 
the suffrage. If “everybody should vote,” 
then, indeed, how could the freed Negro be 
denied this “inherent and inalienable right.” 

Of course, as a matter of fact, the vote 
has always been denied to certain groups 
and classes. To begin with, the young 
people under twenty-one years of age, in 
the eyes of the law, “infants/’ were dis¬ 
franchised. These had no “inherent and 
inalienable” right to vote, because of their 
immaturity. Until recently women were 
not allowed to vote on the basis that the 
franchise would interfere with the per¬ 
formance of domestic duties. Paupers and 
criminals are also disfranchised. 

However, it is quite true that heretofore 
our theory of the suffrage has been that 
any adult male could vote unless specific 
cause were shown why he should be dis¬ 
franchised. Right here we must reverse our 


RESTRICTING THE SUFFRAGE 


251 


approach to the subject. The burden of 
proof should be upon the other side. Our 
prospective voter should be made to show 
indisputable reason for enfranchisement, 
instead of being permitted to vote unless 
cause for disfranchisement can be shown. 
In other words, the ballot must be con¬ 
sidered a privilege and not an “inherent 
and inalienable right?” 

This brings us to the question of the 
standards to be enforced. No doubt this 
is a very difficult matter to decide. A 
very large proportion of our people are 
• quite likely averse to any change. That 
the wind is blowing in the right direction 
is indicated, however, by a general tendency 
to raise the standards of the suffrage. 
Thus, in the State of New York, in the last 
election (1921) an amendment to the State 
Constitution was passed requiring that a 
prospective citizen and voter should read 
and write in English. What is needed is 
an amendment not only to the various 
state constitutions, but to the national 


252 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


constitution. In preparation for such a 
drastic and far-reaching step, the national 
mind should be prepared by the widest 
possible discussion of the problem. 

The suggestion that I am to make here 
I wish to be understood as purely tentative. 
I realize fully that the whole discussion is 
just beginning. 

Hardly anybody will deny that reading, 
writing and speaking the English language 
with facility should be required of every 
voter. Without the ready use of English it 
is impossible for foreigner or native born 
to keep himself sufficiently acquainted 
with affairs to vote intelligently. This 
requirement would disfranchise a consider¬ 
able portion of our native born whites, and 
a much larger portion of our Negro and 
immigrant population. It is not too much to 
say that the graver danger of the ignorant 
voter would be abolished by this measure, 
—that is, if the measure were properly 
drawn and strictly enforced, and at 



RESTRICTING THE SUFFRAGE 


253 


the same time would guarantee absolute and 
complete rights of all under a real intelligent 
democracy. 

But the literacy test is not enough. 
Government today is intricate and the 
duties of the voter are most varied and 
difficult. Very few Americans will hold 
it necessary to so restrict the suffrage that 
only a minority will be qualified to take part. 
But any American intellectually fitted to 
discuss this problem will presently come to 
hold, I believe, that the standards may well 
be raised. They should be so high that our 
more backward young people in the schools 
must be forced to strive diligently in order 
to fit themselves to attain this great privi¬ 
lege and responsibility. 

It would be simple enough, in connection 
with our public school system, to establish 
boards of examination to pass upon pros¬ 
pective candidates. A majority of these 
boards should have had experience as school¬ 
teachers. They should have in hand the 


254 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


matter of providing facilities for educational 
preparation on the part of the student, 
young or old, who might wish to continue 
his school work in order to qualify for the 
use of the ballot. 

The nature of the educational require¬ 
ment, in my opinion, w r ould have to do with 
two sorts of preparation other than 
the ability to read, write and speak the 
English language. First, we should demand 
an intelligence test such as is now required 
of every applicant for enlistment in the 
United States Army or Navy. These 
tests have been reduced to a high degree of 
scientific accuracy. The specific require¬ 
ments would be somewhat different, of 
course, than those demanded for the 
admission to the Army or Navy, insofar 
as they would have a different object. But 
the principles should be the same. The 
purpose of such a test would be to reject 
all imbeciles, morons, and the mentally 
unbalanced. We now know that these 
groups number from ten to fifteen per 


RESTRICTING THE SUFFRAGE 


255 


cent of our population. Placing the ballot 
in their hands amounts to the same thing 
as intrusting it to children from six years 
to fifteen years of age. 

The second feature of our test should 
have to do with a different sort of quali¬ 
fication. The purpose of the intelligence 
test should be to reject those who are 
so lacking in natural intelligence as to be 
unfitted for the simpler responsibilities of 
life. Our second requirement would have 
to do with positive preparation. Any 
applicant should have a full measure of 
sound knowledge with regard to the history 
and government of the United States and 
current political and social problems. Un- 
happilynot only many immigrants, Negroes, 
and illiterate native whites are at present 
unfitted to vote intelligently. I fear that 
an enormous percentage of quite intelligent, 
and in some respects well educated, persons 
are not in a position to pass the simplest 
examination upon the elements of our 


256 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


history and government. Let me not be 
misunderstood here. I do not propose 
to limit the suffrage to those who are 
qualified to become judges on the bench or 
professors of history and political science. 
I would favor no standard so high that an 
intelligent young person could not fully 
prepare himself in a year, by careful study 
for a few evenings a week. The last two 
years of any efficiently graded school should 
furnish courses sufficient to prepare the 
student in these things. Indeed, any child 
completing his grade course where such 
studies were offered and required would 
naturally be considered as having measured 
up to this part of the suffrage requirement. 
His diploma on leaving school, properly 
attested, signed and publicly registered, 
should give him, upon arriving at the age of 
twenty-one, the right to vote. For chil¬ 
dren who have not been enabled, for any 
reason, to complete the grade school work, 
the necessary process seems simple enough. 
Evening classes or other means of prepara¬ 
tion can be furnished them at any time 


RESTRICTING THE SUFFRAGE 257 

during the years preceding voting age. 
Whenever they can pass the examinations 
they will receive the testimonial of proficiency, 
so there will be placed in their hands a most 
valuable and precious document entitling 
them to the sacred privileges and duties of 
an American enfranchised citizenship. 

My basic contention in this matter is 
simply this: both our young people and our 
immigrants must be asked to fit them¬ 
selves with the greatest care for the use of 
the ballot. I am agreed that a great many, 
native-born and foreigners alike, should be 
admitted to every other privilege and right 
of citizenship except that of the ballot. 
Nothing should be denied these except the 
power to degrade and destroy our govern¬ 
ment through ignorance and incompetence. 
The ballot is both a sacred heritage and 
sacred privilege. It must be recognized 
and appreciated as such. The scandal of 
the criminal use of the ballot by outright 
purchase is the primary source from which 
flows political corruption. A premium is 


258 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


put upon the achievement and honors 
conferred in the hearts of the people upon 
the successful politician regardless of the 
methods by which he attains success. Most 
recently this has broken out upon the body 
of the nation as a putrid sore, revealing 
within a systemic condition portending 
the decay and death of our democratic 
civilization. 

Our American democracy, generally suc¬ 
cessful at first, has more recently left much 
to be desired. Even a hundred years ago, 
when we were a primitive, farming popula¬ 
tion, our victorious democracy had its 
seamy side. It brought with it every sort of 
inefficiency. It thrust upon the nation the 
diabolical spoils system, which is still so 
largely with us. Yet at that time democ¬ 
racy was saved by the very simplicities 
of our national life. Today all is so dif¬ 
ferent. It is time for democracy to tie up 
its loose ends and pull up the slack at 
every point. Our public problems today 
are most perplexing to the best informed 


RESTRICTING THE SUFFRAGE 


259 


minds among us. Our whole citizenship 
must not only acquire a degree of education 
in public affairs which no people has ever 
yet attempted—they must be reanimated 
by a spirit of sound morals and an intense 
desire to serve their country well. Other¬ 
wise no purely negative reforms can save 
our democratic system. 



CHAPTER XXIV 


National Solidarity Through 
Education 

I N discussing the public school system 
of the country there is little new for me 
to say. But the importance of the public 
school system in our democracy makes it 
necessary to state again and again the de¬ 
pendence of our government upon the pub¬ 
lic school. In the building of a peculiar 
civilization, the home and the church, as 
two necessary institutions of divine plant¬ 
ing, have been everywhere emphasized. 
But in the maintenance of a democracy, a 
system of free schooling is as absolutely 
necessary as the home or the church. De¬ 
mocracy, however interpreted, must mean 
a leveling of all the people upward. In¬ 
telligence is essential to progress. There is 
no pathway to higher and better living ex¬ 
cept that which is illuminated by the light 
of a general intelligence. Our democracy 
must be taught to think, and taught to 


NATIONAL SOLIDARITY 


261 


think right, if it is to live. The nations 
that continue to grovel and grope, indeed, 
the nations that are being overwhelmed by 
internal revolutions and internecine strife, 
are all untaught or badly taught. I have 
been told that a hungry man near starva¬ 
tion has strange dreams of palaces and 
feasts. Untaught human minds, unfed by 
information, unstimulated by sound knowl¬ 
edge and undirected power of logic, have 
strange dreams. Communism, Sovietism, 
Bolshevism, Anarchy, are the nightmares 
of ignorance. 

Our American democracy, in its earliest 
declarations, emphasized the necessity for 
the general public training of the children 
and the youth. Probably this was the real 
thought in the mind of Mr. Jefferson when 
he wrote his equality clause in the Declara¬ 
tion of Independence. Nothing he ever 
said has been so misinterpreted and mis¬ 
applied. Certainly he could not have meant 
that all men are fundamentally and con¬ 
stitutionally equal. John C. Calhoun, the 


262 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


most logical mind in American history, ex¬ 
cept perhaps Hamilton, said that that 
would be a self-evident falsehood and not a 
self-evident truth. The great Lincoln said 
that there were physical differences be¬ 
tween the African and the Anglo-Saxon 
that precluded political and social equality. 
No two things in the universe are equal in 
this impossible sense which has been dis¬ 
torted from Mr. Jefferson’s statement that, 
“It is a self-evident truth that all men are 
created equal.” Among the billion colored 
people of the earth, the black, the red, and 
the yellow, not one nation has ever de¬ 
veloped and maintained a constitutional 
government. If there were equality in the 
essential things that go to make up the 
characteristics of the colored races, cer¬ 
tainly during the ages there would some¬ 
where have developed among them a civili¬ 
zation capable of producing an upright, 
dignified, independent manhood. All that 
this phrase meant at the founding of the 
republic, and all it means today, is equality 


NATIONAL SOLIDARITY 


263 


of opportunity for realizing the inherent 
possibilities that are locked up in human 
nature. 

\ 

This, of course, contemplates a national 
school system into which all the children 
and the youth of the nation are to be brought 
to have their eyes enlightened, their hearts 
trained, and their ideals harmonized. So 
distinctly American must the public school 
system be that the young life of the nation, 
without respect to race, color or creed, 
shall be brought into it and subjected to 
its moulding and developing process. Na¬ 
tional unity and integrity cannot be main¬ 
tained if a part of the nation is taught and 
a part remains in ignorance. A democracy 
must have uniformity and universality in 
the elementary training of its young life. 
Neither can the nation maintain its exist¬ 
ence and work out its destiny if in its early 
training its youth is broken up into sec¬ 
tional, racial and sectarian groups. 

Concessions have been made to foreign 
elements that have come in to this country and 


264 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


organized themselves into communities, 
holding tenaciously to the language of the 
country from which they came. The almost 
insuperable difficulty of undertaking to 
mobilize the American people in time of 
war had its roots in just this thing of per¬ 
mitting aliens to occupy the American soil, 
live under the American flag, and continue 
to teach the political loyalties of their re¬ 
spective countries in their own languages. 
It necessitated the draft law by which these 
people were compelled to bear arms in de¬ 
fense of the world’s civilization. No thor¬ 
ough American required any sort of com¬ 
pulsion to put him into the great conflict. 
The right to volunteer in the time of na¬ 
tional danger, or in defense of the great 
institutions of human liberty anywhere in 
the world, was the inheritance which had 
been transmitted from the Revolutionary 
period to succeeding generations until it 
came to us and to our children. We were 
denied our birthright when drafted for serv¬ 
ice in war, and in that fact there is a tre¬ 
mendous indictment of the nation for its 


NATIONAL SOLIDARITY 


265 


failure to Americanize all its growing life 
through the public school system and the 
English language. 

In every state of the union the Ku Klux 
Klan will insist upon thoroughly American¬ 
izing the children of the nation through the 
public school. All the racial elements in 
the country must be brought under the 
same standard of tutelage. Only in this 
way can these peoples be harmonized. It 
was the idea of Cecil Rhodes when he 
founded scholarships in Oxford for American 
students that British and American ideals 
should be harmonized. The difficulty with 
Mr. Rhodes’ idea is that the American 
youth are to be harmonized with British 
ideals, but he made no provision in scholar¬ 
ships in any great American institution to 
which British students might come and be 
harmonized with American ideals. The 
public school, however, contemplates taking 
all the elements that are represented in our 
vast population and harmonizing them with 
the ideals of our democracy. So poorly has 


266 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


this work been done in many sections of 
our country, and especially in our con¬ 
gested centers of population, the large cities, 
that the product turned out from the schools 
has frequently contradicted the purpose 
for which the system was founded. We 
cannot take a person of foreign birth or 
extraction into our schools maintained by 
taxation and turn him out Italian-Ameri- 
can, British-American, Irish-American, Jew- 
ish-American, German-American, Japanese- 
American, Chinese-American or Afro-Ameri¬ 
can. He must come out an American with 
all of his distinctive qualities and character¬ 
istics swallowed up and absorbed in Ameri¬ 
can democracy. The institution was found¬ 
ed by the fathers and the pattern of Ameri¬ 
can life was made by the great architects 
of human liberty, and every time a hy¬ 
phenated American is turned out of any 
American school it is a contradiction of the 
very purpose of the republic. 

Phis work of educating the youth of the 
nation must be done in the open. We have 


NATIONAL SOLIDARITY 


267 


no objections to the foundation of schools 
privately or by communities of peculiar 
racial distinction, or even by sectarians who, 
because of peculiar tenets, wish to keep 
their children under the eye of the church. 
To repeat what we have already stated, all 
we insist upon is just this—that these 
schools shall be in every sense public, open 
to public inspection. They must be sub¬ 
jected to regulation by properly constituted 
authority. The same courses in the fun¬ 
damentals of Americanism must be taught 
in a privately owned or conducted school 
as in the public schools. Democracy can 
not be taught and developed behind closed 
doors. Its vital breath is openness. It has re¬ 
cently broken down many doors through¬ 
out the world. There are to be no more 
secret treaties, no more diplomatic intri¬ 
guing, nothing between the governments of 
the nations upon which the eyes of all the 
world may not look. Surely, a democracy 
demanding openness in all the ways of man¬ 
kind, as the nations move surely toward a 
common fraternity, can not undertake to 



268 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


conceal any part of its young life in its 
training for service to its country and to the 
world. 

Holding as the Klan does that the tenets 
of Christianity as a code of morals are 
essential to our democracy, we are only too 
ready to agree that there should be dis¬ 
tinctive religious training. Here, at the 
very threshold, there is a difficulty. Abso¬ 
lute freedom of conscience in religious mat¬ 
ters is granted to American citizens. The 
public school teachers are drawn from va¬ 
rious religious organizations, without respect 
to their church affiliations. In the average 
public school the children being taught 
represent numerous Christian sects and not 
a few non-Christian sects. It would be con¬ 
trary to every fundamental of our national 
life to introduce specific religious doctrines 
or tenets among this diversified group. 
Perhaps the plan recently tried out in New 
York City would solve this problem. The 
children were dismissed from school a part 
of a day each week, that they might go to 


NATIONAL SOLIDARITY 


269 


their respective places of worship and there 
be taught by ministers or lecturers of their 
peculiar faith in the essential things of reli¬ 
gion and ethics. 

This much is sure: These foreign peoples 
must be unified in Americanism and it can 
not be done except through our public 
schools. North Carolina has adopted the 
slogan, “Abolish illiteracy in ten years.” 
We should take that slogan for the whole 
American nation. By “literacy” we should 
mean literacy in English. This can only be 
accomplished, however, when native and 
foreigner, Catholic and Protestant, Jew 
and Gentile, gladly bring their children to¬ 
gether and place them side by side to be 
taught in the things of democracy. 

Demands have been made during the 
past few years that the funds collected in 
taxes for the maintenance of public schools 
be segregated. Our fellow citizens of one 
powerful religious organization have in¬ 
sisted that monies paid out by members 


270 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


of that church in taxes for public education 
be returned to the denomination and ap¬ 
plied to the parochial schools, which are 
owned and controlled by the church. Of 
course this means that a considerable per¬ 
centage of the young population of the 
country would be withdrawn from the 
Americanizing schools of the public and 
trained only as the church directed. Church 
and state are forever separated in the de¬ 
mocracy of America. Any tendency to 
bring them together in building the soli¬ 
darity of the nation should be arrested. It 
is not worthwhile to experiment further in 
this matter. All history shows the utter 
futility of attempting to build a robust, 
virtuous, enlightened national life through 
union of Church and State; and I wish to 
say with the utmost composure, and speak¬ 
ing, I trust, for every real American, that 
not one dollar of public monies shall ever 
be diverted from the public schools for 
sectarian institutions. This declaration may 
sound explosive. Yet I hope it will give no 
offense to anybody. The sooner it is ac- 


NATIONAL SOLIDARITY 


271 


cepted as final, so much the sooner will a 
very real cause of difficulty and misunder¬ 
standing be removed. 

A study of our history is fundamental to 
the construction and the maintenance of a 
sound national life. Thomas Carlyle once 
very correctly said that one cannot manage 
the present or predict the future except 
from an accurate knowledge of the past. 
All sectarian textbooks in histories, partisan 
textbooks or sectional textbooks, are nat¬ 
urally distorted and perverted. Men who 
hold tenaciously to a particular setting, 
given a religious truth or any other his¬ 
torical fact, have looked at their fellowmen 
through a distorted perspective. The triv¬ 
ial has frequently appeared to them to be 
the magnificent, and the magnificent the 
trivial. Bias has characterized all such 
narratives. It is difficult enough to secure 
a history of any country or its. people in its 
political, economic, industrial and social 
development, that is basically true to the 
facts. The man who writes is apt to be 


272 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


tremendously impressed by the age in 
which he lives. The tale that he tells is 
often a crude compilation of errors. Only 
recently the manuscript of a history in its 
making was tendered by a well known pub¬ 
lishing house to a patriotic organization of 
the South for review. One of many glaring 
errors that obtruded from this book, which 
was designed to become a text book, was 
the statement that the democratic party 
originated with the original Ku Klux Klan 
of the Sixties. 2\nother history in common 
use in the public schools of the country, 
filled with all sorts of inaccuracies and mis¬ 
statements, was recently taken from the 
schools in one great section of the country. 
When the attention of the author was called 
to the inaccuracies, he offered to expurgate 
the offensive statements of which the sec¬ 
tion complained, but refused to change his 
history for other sections of the country 
where the statements were as yet unchal¬ 
lenged. If such histories are foisted upon 
our school system, and our children are 
taught the errors of the prejudiced and in- 


NATIONAL SOLIDARITY 


273 


accurate historian, how much worse, and 
how much more dangerous, would the 
teaching be if the history texts are pur¬ 
posefully written by narrow sectarians, and 
the facts discolored by religious prejudice? 
The time has surely come when real his¬ 
tory should be written by the truthful and 
wise, and the facts of our national virtues 
and vices, our strength and our weakness, 
our dangers and our securities, should be 
taught in our public schools, and taught to 
all the children. The preparation or selec¬ 
tion of school text books in history is no 
more a fitting subject for rancorous bicker¬ 
ing among sectarian politicians than the 
writing of text books in chemistry. It is 
entirely a matter for trained historians and 
professional teachers. We must insist that 
politicians of all breeds keep their hands 
far removed from these things. 


CHAPTER XXV 


The Conservation of the American 

Home 

HE American home is rapidly becom- 



JL ing a failure. After countless ages of 
biological and social evolution, that mar¬ 
velous process of change and growth which 
has produced us, we are committing suicide 
as a nation and as a people. A home with¬ 
out children is not, in a social sense, a home 
at all. It is only a place in which, and a 
condition under which, two persons of op¬ 
posite sex live together more happily and 
comfortably, perhaps less so, than they 
could do apart. 

The American home, the home in which 
healthy, intelligent and characterful chil¬ 
dren are bred and reared, both for their own 
sakes and the nation’s service—this home 
is the veritable rockbottom of our national 
well-being. Let the home fail, and all our 
wealth and material achievement is naught 
but poverty and trash. 



CONSERVATION OF AMERICAN HOMES 


27 5 


The millions of homes in which there are 
no children, or only one child, the birth of 
which was perhaps wholly unintentional, 
are so many millions of tombs in which the 
nation’s hope and future lie buried. The 
millions of young unmarried Americans, 
between the ages of twenty-one and forty 
years, whatever be the cause of their un¬ 
natural and unsocial condition, are just so 
many millions of Americans who have re¬ 
jected life. All of the unmarried, all of the 
married who do not reproduce themselves, 
are a crushing accusation against our na¬ 
tional intelligence, our national morals, and 
our national social policy. What do these 
figures not mean in terms of disappoint¬ 
ment and despair, of social purpose un¬ 
fulfilled, of negative sorrow and anguish 
in the heart of the individual, of souls unfed 
in terms of every higher realization of life? 

A people which can calmly behold a large 
per cent of its marriageable young people 
homeless and childless has confessed itself 
to be a broken and dissolving remnant 


276 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


among the nations. We, lords of the richest 
land in all the four quarters of the world, 
voluntarily place our national head upon 
the block and beckon to the executioner, 
axe in hand, to make haste. 

i 

Visualize this old-time American home— 
on the hillside, among the trees. For many 
generations it has stood foursquare against 
every blast of winter, every ugly aspect of 
circumstance. From its wide portals have 
gone forth a myriad of the young and gay, 
the hopeful and the brave. Its offspring 
peopled all our West. Its victories in the 
wilderness, through a hundred years, have 
no counterpart in all the history of human¬ 
ity. The history of America has been the 
history of the American home—of what that 
home has accomplished for the citizens that 
were born and reared under its sheltering 
roof. 

Open the door! Wait! You shall see 
none enter here. Only a going out—a fu¬ 
neral procession. A death march sounds 




CONSERVATION OF AMERICAN HOMES 111 

forth, a mighty people, the hope of the 
world such a people is borne to the grave. 
Where there is no laughter of children, 
there Death is King. And those that see 
make jest and frolic. 

In the even scales of biological law and of 
mathematical calculation, our people are 
being weighed in the balance and found 
wanting. We Americans, all that we have 
been, and all that we are, are being borne 
to the grave in execution of the law. We 
have been tried and condemned by a just 
Judge. 

It is a most dangerous error to undertake 
to build a national life on the individual as a 
unit. “God has set the solitary in families,“ 
said Moses, as he led his people through the 
vast wilderness unto the promised land. 
We may destroy all else, but leave the home 
and the family, and yet all the elements 
and works that make the nation can be 
once again regained and rebuilt. We may 
possess all else, wealth and power, all the 


278 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


arts and all the knowing, thriving schools 
and majestic temples—but if the home 
crumbles and decays, we perish with it 
utterly. 

Oh! The deep, deep and terrible tragedy 
of our Nordic race in America! We have 
been decimated by fratricidal war. Our 
flesh and blood have been corrupted by 
industrialism. Now, however, we go to our 
destruction simply because we do not care 
to live. We go as blindly as a species of 
animals whose conditions of life have been 
completely upset by new forces with which 
they do not know how to deal. Sheep and 
swine, nay, the wild beasts of the field, 
could not act with such utter carelessness 
and immorality as we. All that we have 
done will perish with us. Other nations 
have lived and left record of their labors in 
a lofty literature or a resplendent art. The 
glory of the temples they have builded keeps 
their memory green centuries after their 
very language is forgotten. The people 
of the age of Pericles will live on in their 



CONSERVATION OF AMERICAN HOMES 


279 


work, to beautify and glorify humanity for 
twice ten thousand years. But we Ameri¬ 
cans are perishing miserably to leave no 
record of high value, because our greater 
work has been bound up in our very selves. 
We have all lived and labored together as 
free men. We have proven to a faithless 
world that the humblest toiler could wield 

i 

the mightiest and most glittering scepter of 
power. We have made good the proud 
boast of a triumphant democracy. All that 
we have been, as a beckoning star among 
the nations, all that we have meant to the 
world of hope in the common man, is doomed 
to perish with us. 

All I seek to do in these chapters is to 
bring the mind and heart of my country to 
this place. Here, in the old-fashioned 
American home, we shall do battle. Here 
we shall fight the last fight, to win or to lose. 
If we are to have a greater and better 
America, we must begin by breeding better 
Americans in larger numbers. There is no 
other way. The man who says our young 


280 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


men and women, in general, do not desire 
homes and children, says a falsehood. We 
neither desire nor expect fifteen children in 
the home. What we do insist upon, in 
recreating all the conditions about that 
home, is two, three, four, and sometimes, 
in exceptional cases, five or six children. 
For our country as a whole, during this 
century, we crave but a small increase in 
native born population in every decade— 
perhaps ten or twelve per cent. We would 
reject, by taking forethought and preventing 
marriage, the children of the criminal, the 
children of the imbecile and the insane, the 
children of those who are accursed with 
incurable diseases or incurable indolence. 
We would remould all that needs remoulding 
in order to receive into the hearts and the 
homes of our country the children of the 
healthy and the industrious, the honest and 
intelligent, the high-minded and the sensi¬ 
tive. 

Give our young people of America but 
half a chance! Let them have their own 



CONSERVATION OF AMERICAN HOMES 


281 


country in which to test out the labor of 
their hands and the love of their hearts! 
Let them again lay upon themselves the 
first duty of the supreme law of nature! 
They can and will preserve to this conti¬ 
nent every higher value, every article of faith 
left to their keeping. Remove from their 
environment a competition that is unfair 
and killing. Give them bread and not a 
stone for their toil. Give them solid assur¬ 
ance and not a gnawing insecurity of live¬ 
lihood, and they will give to their country 
a future through the sons and daughters of 
their love. 

To admit that there is a growing number 
of our young women who reject child-bear¬ 
ing as a burden is merely to re-emphasize 
the crying need of a socializing education. 
It is the work of those who know and who 
care, to teach those who are ignorant and 
careless of duty. We teach our young peo¬ 
ple that they must help prepare themselves 
for citizenship and self-support. Citizen¬ 
ship for our American young women includes 


282 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


the essential duty of motherhood, and for 
our young men the duty of the creation and 
support of a family. A cornerstone of our 
ethical teaching should be the preparation 
of the minds of the young for home-build¬ 
ing and parenthood. Every able-bodied 
man, or woman, who deigns to eat, should 
perform some sort of useful work. Sim¬ 
ilarly every normal young man and woman 
who accepts life should be gladly willing 
to create life. Around and above these 
homes and these children we must place the 
protection of every means furnished by 
applied science. To educate them and to 
fit them for useful work and public service, 
we must apply the first fruits of our na¬ 
tion’s wealth. To offer to these young citi¬ 
zens, upon maturity, full opportunity for 
fruitful labor and self expression, we must 
be ready to reject much error that is an¬ 
cient, and accept much truth that is new 
and sometimes startling. 

America consists of and exists in the 
home. The home is America. To lose the 


CONSERVATION OF AMERICAN HOMES 


283 


fight here is to lose all. To win at this point 
is to win for ourselves national salvation, 
and lor the world our share in its ultimate 
redemption. 


A FINAL WORD 


L ET me confess that I alone am respon¬ 
sible for the reorganization of the Ku 
Klux Klan. No one suggested it to me. 
No one helped me in the formulation of its 
new task, nor in the working out of any of 
its basic principles or methods. So it may 
not be entirely uninteresting to the reader 
for me to close this statement with a brief 
narrative of the first growth of this con¬ 
cept in my own mind. 

To begin with, my childhood fancies 
were much laid hold of by the stories I 
heard of the original Ku Klux Klan. 
These stories were told me in my own home. 
Sometimes in Negro cabins the old darkies 
would play upon my boyish mind with mar¬ 
velous tales of the hosts of white-robed 
horsemen—the souls of the departed soldiers 
of the great war—who were used to ride 
up and down the countryside. Sometimes 
I would imagine these cavalcades passing 
swiftly and silently, like a white cloud, 


A FINAL WORD 


285 


across the starry heavens. Later, when a 
more accurate book of knowledge of this 
strange epoch of American history was 
opened up to me, I eagerly devoured all 
the reading I could find pertaining to the 
subject. Yet the impressions made upon 
me by the legendary account never entirely 
lost their force. So, as I grew to manhood, 
my mind, perhaps overburdened while yet 
too young, with a sense of the responsi¬ 
bilities of citizenship, made the service of 
my country a deeply set conviction. I 
never went very joyously either to my 
studies or to my active duties. To my 
generation, as it grew up in the defeated, 
broken and impoverished South, the prob¬ 
lems of life presented heavy tasks rather 
than stirring issues. We had to make all 
our beginnings as a people over again. Our 
mood was much like that of the Puritan 
founders of New England when they set 
themselves to struggle against the stern 
climate and the thin and unfruitful soil of 
their section. A statement of Robert E. 
Lee to a member of his staff the day before 


286 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


he surrendered at Appomattox has been 
more than once my sheet-anchor. ‘‘Cap¬ 
tain,” said our great leader, “I should 
gladly lay down my life, but it is now my 
duty to live. The way for me has been 
hard, very hard—no pathway of duty is 
easy—-only those who have encountered 
obstacles, faced difficulties, and endured 
extreme hardships, know how much easier 
it would be for me to die, than to live in 
response to the call of duty.” 

We people of the South lived on. We 
have tried to do our duty. We have even 
tried to forget the past, though often it 
may not seem so to our fellow citizens. 

In 1898 it was my privilege to enlist in 
the glorious service of our reunited country. 
Of course every youth who then donned the 
uniform imagined that he would proceed 
at once to Cuba and do battle for the 
liberation of that country from the tyranny 
of the Spanish monarchy. My first evening 
in camp, under the old flag of the Union, 




A FINAL WORD 


287 


was an experience never to be forgotten. 
I believe that all of the thousand young men 
in the Alabama regiment with which I 
served felt their hearts moved by something 
of the same great emotion. We were to be 
under the command of Nelson Miles and 
Fitzhugh Lee, of Wesley Merritt and Joe 
Wheeler. 

The heat and noise of the day gave way 
to the soft, warm flush of the evening. 
Such an evening! Under the clearest of 
skies and the brightest of stars I stood on 
guard at midnight. My mind seemed to be 
so passive, so sensitive, so subjected to 
the thoughts that rushed out of the universe, 
from the past and the mysterious present 
and the unknowable future, to take pos¬ 
session of my soul. I saw my country 
ennobled by the great task of liberty and of 
love to which she had set herself on that 
occasion. United at last! United in a 
common cause! Reforming a Union which 
had always existed in the hearts of all, 
underneath those superficial forces which 


288 


THE KLAN UNMASKED 


so long troubled us and kept us apart. And 
now a great fountain of joy and of pride, 
pressing from the heart, filled every artery 
almost to bursting. On that night I first 
understood my country and saw, emblazoned 
in the sky, the part to which the Lord of 
Hosts had called her. 

To a young man whose heart is truly en¬ 
listed in the issue of a great war, the mighty 
thrill of the soul is the ultimate experience 
of life. So is the banner of his country 
raised aloft. So are his arms consecrated 
by the deepest impulses of the spirit. 
Lyric poetry has often exhausted its meters 
and its music at the altar of the lesser loves. 
On that strangest of nights I knew that 
here was a love that makes the heart of 
youth deny all that comes from self and 
lift burning eyes to the stars. 

Oh my people—so 1 diers—workers— 
pioneers—adven turers—s a v i o r s—i n the 
four quarters of the earth! Be you—your 
deeds—your vision,—all in all—imperish- 





A FINAL WORD 


289 


able! The world listens to hear the sound 
of the song you sing upon the march. 
Somehow I feel and know that you shall 
live—gloriously—throughout the ages. 





















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